


orthodrome

by penhaligon



Series: Watcher Kit [3]
Category: Pillars of Eternity
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-03
Updated: 2019-11-13
Packaged: 2020-12-27 20:18:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 23,749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21124637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/penhaligon/pseuds/penhaligon
Summary: There's something underneath the keep. The Watcher is sure of it.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not going to explore the whole vast AU that could spring from the idea of Eothas calming down by a margin and the Watcher sniffing him out beforehand, but I'm very interested in the possibilities, so consider this a concept fic.

**orthodrome:** _n._ great circle;  
a circle of which a segment represents the shortest distance between two points on the surface of a sphere,  
the center of which is intersected by the plane containing the circle

* * *

When you awaken on a morning like any other, you know that something is different.

It tugs you into wakefulness, hovering on the cliff's edge of dream, and your eyes drag themselves open. The canopy above is all you see, and you stare dumbly at it, as if your thoughts might be found there, in its rich purple threads. Sunlight glints somewhere to your right, slipping through the curtains.

Then a chill shudders its way down your spine. Your eyes blink wide, and you sit up violently, throwing off the covers and reaching for the sword leaning against your nightstand as you vault out of bed. Sheathed In Autumn whistles like a cold north wind as it's yanked out of its scabbard, and you scan the room with your back to the wall, heart pounding somewhere in the region of in your throat, until your mind catches up with your racing pulse.

You lower the blade slowly and listen on more than one plane, but you feel and hear nothing out of the ordinary. No voice in your mind, no murmur at the edges of your hearing. No telltale shiver of essence through your spine, no pinprick of the ethereal against your thoughts.

_My lady?_ a clear and easily identifiable voice says in your head. The Steward's concern nudges against the walls of your mind. _I felt your distress. Are you alright?_

With your eyes still sweeping the room, and your mind still reaching into the ether, you slide the sword back into its scabbard. _Yeah,_ you say, and it isn't quite true. Sometimes you have dreams that are nothing more than scrambled reconstructions of everything you've seen in your strange life, and sometimes contact with the ether feels like a dream. Even after all this time, even with your Awakening quieted for a few years now, you can't always tell the difference. You can't even remember what it is that had you waking with your heart in your throat. _I think I was just dreaming._

* * *

But as you go through the day, a growing uncertainty gnaws at your bones. Something feels different, in a frustrating way that escapes any tongue you know. It's as if someone had come through in the night and shifted everything around you by a centimeter -- not noticeable to anyone unfamiliar with deep ethereal recesses of your surroundings, but glaring and jarring to a mind attuned with it.

You stare distractedly at blank parchments that are supposed to be a writ of donation and a response to a gala invitation, until you give up on those with a huff and pass them off to your assistant, a studious young orlan woman from Eir Glanfath whom you sometimes suspect is a friendly spy sent by the anamfatha to make sure that Caed Nua is in good hands. You tell her to do her level best to imitate you, and then you seek out other things to occupy your thoughts. But though you smile for Vela and whisk her away on an adventure around the hedge maze, and though the cook corners you in the hearth with demands that you taste test tonight's dinner, your thoughts only grow more unsettled.

When you ask the Steward, she tells you that all is well in the keep itself, but her words trail away, something troubled in the silence.

"I can sense nothing on my own," she says finally. "But... I can feel something through you, like an echo. A... disturbance. It would be undetectable to me if our minds were not attuned. You are not imagining things, my lady. Yours is merely the strongest mind here."

You don't really know how to express your thanks for the reassurance. For the fact that you can turn to someone who knows you and knows your mind, when you aren't sure what is real and what is not. But you don't need to thank her. She's in your head. She already knows.

Something is different, you think, as you leave the main keep and stare out unseeingly at Caed Nua shining in the sunlight. But the question remains: what?

It isn't you, and it isn't the land around the keep. Captain Ximena assures you that all is quiet, and when you sit on the topmost stand in the forum and cast your senses out in all directions, your adra pendant in the shape of the Wheel burns against your chest and pushes your mind out far past your soul's usual range. You run up against nothing but travelers creeping along the roads and animals skittering through the underbrush.

It isn't east or west or north or south, which leaves only one real option.

It's down.

* * *

The Endless Paths have been quiet for five years now, transformed from a place of death and madness to a place of retreat. It's been many a time that you've sought refuge and solitude within the silent, shadowed levels, with only the great titan and the indistinct whisper of adra veins for company. There's a peace within the earth, that even a bloody history can't blight, a hush and tranquility that can't be found above the surface. Spending time in subterranean serenity keeps you feeling sane and steady, because even without an Awakening tearing at the threads of your mind, sometimes life as a cipher and Watcher and Lady of Caed Nua is all a bit much.

But you don't feel so steady anymore.

You hand Vela over to Captain Ximena before you go. The girl immediately takes off down the length of the barracks with your little white wurm clinging haphazardly to her shoulders, while Pumpkin the tabby cat trails after her in a stately manner, to the amusement of the guards. The stern-faced savannah folk woman watches you with narrowed eyes, however, and Ximena waits until Vela is out of earshot before asking, "Is everything okay, ma'am?"

"I don't know yet," you say. "I need to find out. While I do," you nod towards Vela, who is already chattering away to one of her favorite guards, "your job is to keep her safe if something happens. Above all else." It might be nothing, but you don't take chances, not with Vela.

Ximena nods. She doesn't blink at the strangeness of the request, and that's why she's the captain of your guard. "I can have a squadron ready in under five minutes if you need," she offers.

But you shake your head. "I'm going below," you say. "I think something's wrong there." You don't how to explain the gnawing unease reverberating under your skull, so you tilt your head and tap a finger against your temple. The message is clear enough.

Ximena's eyes bore into you. "Very well," she says, her professionalism not quite masking her reluctance. "Call for backup if you need, ma'am. I'll leave a runner with the Steward today."

You hug Vela and tell her that you're going for one of your usual walks, and then you head for the chapel. You step into its shadow, where the hatch resides, and a shiver rocks your spine as you grab the handle. You stop with your hand on the hatch, looking up at the stone walls of the chapel, worn and ancient in a way that even careful restoration cannot entirely hide.

The chapel had stood for nothing in particular until you'd had it dedicated to Eothas in a fit of righteous spite. That had certainly been one of your less popular decisions, but the look on Edér's face had been worth it, and you'd learned over the years that, new money or not, having wealth and land meant that laws were more like suggestions. After all, few people were willing to argue with the only thaynu in the Dyrwood who'd laid her claim by killing a dragon, a sizable number of monsters, and an erstwhile challenger, who had walked in and brushed off a curse.

No one had made snide remarks about Eothasians in your presence again, after that.

Shaking your head to clear it of memories, you enter the Endless Paths by means of the master staircase. You intend to narrow down the source of the disturbance to whatever level it resides in and get there as quickly as possible, but as soon as you leave the surface and push your senses down as far as you can, the problem with that becomes immediately apparent.

It's not confined to a single level. It's in all of them.

So you take the levels one by one, lighting each brazier with your torch. You scrape your mind over every inch within, digging into the physical field of essence with a cipher's hand and into the spiritual ether with a Watcher's ear. What you find is agitation, essence afire and the ether roiling in turbulent reaction to... something. You let it roll over you, and your heartbeat quickens. Your breathing wants to hurry along with it, but you master your lungs, maintaining control in the face of whatever has multiple planes of existence in an excited state, and you push farther in.

Your mind treads one path, your feet tread another, one layered over the other, and you aren't fully aware of reaching the fourth level. Your focus is on the ether and on what your mentor had called the quintessential field around you, the low-level hum of essence generated from the core of Eora. You comb through all planes of existence that you can touch, hunting down whatever is hiding within.

It doesn't resist, exactly, but it bends and folds in a way that's meant to conceal the thing coiling within it, blending in with the magnified hum of essence that still lingers under Caed Nua. An ordinary person would be fooled. Even another cipher or Watcher might be fooled. But you haven't spent your entire life attuned to essence fields with increasing precision and skill for nothing. You've spent many hours here in the depths besides, enough to know when something is _wrong_.

Without meaning to, you find yourself standing on the platform in front of Maros Nua's head.

You come back to yourself, to your other senses, and the adra titan comes into focus. It looks normal, as normal as a gargantuan tribute to the dead can be, adra lined with whirling bronze in the shape of a titanic head jutting out of the ground and gazing sightlessly upward. You blink at it and extend a hand, resting your palm against the adra. The wheel at your neck burns hot, and the fragmented essence within the titan churns unbearably quick, prickling against your skin and your mind.

You want to snatch your hand away, but you keep it pressed against the adra, feeling, listening, assessing the minute fluctuations of energy and comparing them to all you know of essence and souls.

There's something _inside_ the titan.

You don't move your hand. Your lips curl back in challenge, and you gather essence around yourself, pulling it from your pendant, from the titan, from your own soul. Readying yourself, in case you need to strike. Every inch of skin and bone, mind and soul, everything that makes you up, starts to burn as hot as the adra wheel hanging from your neck.

"What are you?" you ask.

Moments creep by, and nothing answers. You grit your teeth, and the fingers pressed against the titan arch, seeking out the thrum of tiny structural weaknesses in the adra. You press your mind against them, diving deeper into the titan's roiling field, and a burning sensation crawls over your skin. But you don't let up.

"Answer me!" you demand.

A moment hangs suspended and rolls forward ponderously like an eon, and then something shifts under your hand.

The air shifts too, the cavern bleeding away into darkness. A void envelops you, but just as quickly, pinpoints of light paint themselves across the black, bursting into being all around you -- the stars and more, great swaths of dusty light that wind through the diamonds of the night. You yank your hand back from the adra statue that you can feel but not see, and you move, your boots scraping against the platform still beneath your feet. The thing in the titan radiates from all directions now, and when you turn and look down, you see it for what it is.

A figure of light stands below at the foot of the platform, white-gold and shining, its radiant aura spilling out into the darkness like a small sun illuminating the night. The figure is shaped like kith, but almost entirely featureless, and you don't know if that's because it burns too brightly to see clearly or because it has no features.

You stare, stunned and speechless, your mind chasing observations and conclusions like a hound on the trail of blood, arriving at the only destination possible.

You don't let go of the vortex of essence you've wrapped around yourself. You draw it in tighter, reflexively, defensively. "You..." But your voice trips in your throat, and all you can do is stare in astonishment. You've seen a lot in your life, and things don't have a habit of surprising you anymore. But this... this is...

There's a _god_ under your _keep_.

_I should have known that you would seek me out, Watcher,_ Eothas says, in a voice as sonorous as it is soothing. It echoes in your head and in the air around you, unfolding among the stars, emanating from the figure before you and the titan behind. If he has a mouth, you can't see it amidst the light. _Your connection to all that surrounds you is stronger than most._

You gape at him a moment longer, and then, with effort, you pull your racing thoughts together. You hold the essence around you in equilibrium, neither letting it grow nor letting it fade. You trust no god, especially not one that's been dead to the world for years, and you don't move from the platform, either. You stand atop the wood that you can feel more than see, at the highest level of the platform, staring down at the glowing figure of Eothas, who stares back calmly.

You don't even know where to start, so you ask the only thing you can: "What the fuck are you doing here?"

The figure doesn't move, but something that you can only just feel pulls back in him. His mind is a great thing that burns with more essence than you've perhaps touched in all your life, but you know where it came from, and it isn't wholly alien. It's _present_, here in the physical plane, in a way that the gods at Teir Evron had not been, and even as he speaks, you get the sense that there's more you can't see. Something hidden, tucked away beyond the words. It's a sense that you've had many times as a cipher. It's a sense that's kept you alive more times than you can count.

_This body,_ Eothas says, and you are acutely aware of the way that the unseen titan at your back radiates warm energy, _was the only thing capable of... housing me, after Evon Dewr, while I gathered myself again._

The hidden thing lurks elsewhere, beyond your reach, and the back of your neck prickles like you have hackles to raise. You are not so reckless as to reach directly into the mind of a god to find out what it is that hides there, but something sparks in you, frustration starting a slow boil. "You know," you say coldly, drawing yourself up, and you don't care that you're throwing accusations a god, that you're holding essence ready and waiting like you're capable of threatening him with it, "everything I've heard about you, I never took you for a _liar_."

The figure doesn't move. If he has a mouth, you can't see it. But the flickering impression of a smile washes over you, and with it a sense of admiration that rattles you down to your bones._ You see much,_ Eothas says. _I did not take you for a worshiper, and yet the chapel above us stands in my honor._

You take a moment to get your wits back. "That was for a friend," you say, and your stomach lurches with the reminder, with frustration, with fury. You know that he's hiding something, that he didn't intend to be found here, and you don't fight your building anger. You're tired of gods, and you advance down the half-seen steps of the platform, violet essence crackling around you. The sound of your boots striking wood echoes through the vision around you, through the stars. "And you owe him. You owe everyone a _damn_ good explanation." You stop at the next level of the platform, where it turns and leads to the ground, and you stand at the edge of the stairs there, glaring down at Eothas. "So start talking."

The figure's head tilts up at you. You feel no anger, no answering frustration. This god is less reactive than some, and somehow that's more irritating._ I will give you an explanation,_ Eothas says. _But I believe that it is something you already know, and a sentiment you share._

"What are you talking about?" you ask, frosty.

_You have come to this place often, Watcher,_ Eothas says. _Your soul's footprint is vivid. You have spoken to the adra below and to the statue behind you. It resonates even now, and I hear it._

Your lips draw thin as you clench your teeth. "How long have you been down here?"

_Long enough,_ Eothas says. _I have not peered into your mind. I have only heard what you've left here for the earth._

A change flickers through the shining figure, and you think you see two gleaming women standing on either side of it now, three figures instead of one -- the Dawnstars. A point between your eyes aches as you try to focus on all of them, and you settle on one woman, then another, then the man, not sure where to look. 

_You know what I am about to say,_ the apparition says, their voices overlapping in a mellow harmony. _I entered Waidwen with the intention of illuminating the true history of the gods, of Engwith, and throwing light on the lies we gods have perpetuated for millennia, for the Eastern Reach to see._ They pause. The two on either side take on a more translucent quality, and when they speak again, Eothas's voice is the loudest. _I admit, I overreached. And I see now that success would not have guaranteed anything. Belief creates a foundation upon which a mind's reality is built, and some minds can never let go of that foundation. It would not have achieved what I wished._

As he finishes speaking, you become aware of the fact that you're gaping at him again. You aren't sure what you'd expected, but you realize that you have no idea what kind of being stands below you. The image you'd had, shaped by what you know of the Saint's War and the other gods, crumbles fast, and in its place is a vast uncertainty. "And why would you want that?"

_I want mortals to be free of the illusions we've created,_ the figure says, and the women fade back in for a moment, as your eyes crisscross with the instinct to keep an eye on all of them. It doesn't sound like untruth to your cipher's ear. _Free to choose what kind of covenant they want with the gods, free of the falsehoods that keep them dependent and keep the gods arrogant. Kith cannot grow and transform while we stand in your way._

You stand there silently, absorbing it, staring out at the boundless void littered with stars, before returning your attention to Eothas. He's right -- it's not like you disagree with the sentiment. But that hidden thing still lies somewhere out of sight, and there is little you've seen of the gods that has made you think they'd be willing to lower themselves for kith. Not to the degree of exposing every ugly truth about their kind. "I mean, why do you care?"

The luminescent figure stands alone once more. There is regret churning somewhere in his mind, a tidal wave of sorrow that would overwhelm you if you listened too closely, and it doesn't feel insincere. But you watch him suspiciously. _I have felt the weight of inaction for a long time now,_ he says. _One must always do as their conscience dictates, even if it means abdicating a position of power. Even if it comes late._

"Okay," you say, and the frustration boiling within you rises up again, "but that's not what I'm asking." You stalk down the steps, pulling the vortex of essence in so tightly that it fits you like a second skin. You hold no illusion that it could protect you. You don't think you need anything to protect you right now, but you like a sense of control. "Why is it important to you?" You're in his face now, and he doesn't move. You think that you see an actual face somewhere in all that light, and it might be unbearably beautiful. "Why are _you_, out of all of the gods, willing to do that? And don't give me a god's answer."

Eothas isn't any taller than you, and his attention doesn't burn, but it envelops you fully, and you itch with the desire to pull back from the sensation of it, from the way that he doesn't get angry even when you're blatantly squaring up. You remain rooted where you are, waiting.

Then the attention shifts, and the figure moves, no longer so unnaturally still. He turns, out towards the starry void and its dusty light, and you follow a gaze that you can't see.

_I am the god of the stars,_ Eothas says. _But in truth, they are beyond even us, save for one._ He walks a few steps as if to set out among the stars, and it's only then that you realize that the void reflects back on itself, that doubles of you and him move beneath you, across the void's still-pond surface. _They're farther than you can imagine. Sometimes even I have difficulty grasping it._ He turns back to you, and somehow, you know that there's a smile on his face. It doesn't overwhelm you this time._ Even the gods are small, from a different point of view._

Something swells in your chest. It squeezes tight when you look out at the shimmering void, like homesickness for a place you've never been to. You step forward, past Eothas, your eyes on the stars. Your gaze has been drawn ever downward, towards the planet and its secrets, but it doesn't mean that you haven't looked up sometimes.

It had never occurred to you that a god might, too.

_It is... humbling,_ Eothas says. _And I didn't care for that feeling, at first. But I have grown to appreciate it, and to appreciate how it must feel for those smaller than me._

You tear your eyes away from the void and look to the god of light. Your thoughts are racing again, trying to take all of the disparate pieces and impressions of what you know of Eothas and what you've heard, and arrange them into a whole. It doesn't quite align, because his mind is still alien enough that getting a read on him is like trying to hold light in your fingers, but you fold your arms and nod, relaxing your hold on the essence clutched tight.

"Okay," you say again, as the vortex dissipates. "I'm listening. But _don't_ tell me that you're just... re-forming here, or whatever. I know when someone's lying to me, god or not."

And you know that he is listening too, because the hidden thing stirs, like a dark shadow in an ocean. A bit of wariness creeps back into your shoulders and down your spine.

The figure stands luminous against the darkness. It is still alone, but something is different about it now. You see an object curving in its grip, and when you squint and look with more than just your eyes, you think you see a farmer's sickle._ You will not like it,_ he says, the thrum of his voice softer.

Your arms unfold, and your fists clench at your sides, drawing essence towards them on pure instinct. You force them to relax. "Spit it out."

The hidden thing swims upward, towards the surface, and the outline of a sickle is clear. There might be a lantern in his other hand, though it's fainter, less defined. _The Saint's War cannot happen again_, Eothas -- or Gaun -- says. _The Godhammer was more powerful than I expected. Magran's influence, but it was a victory in its own way. Defeating a god showed mortals that it could be done. That such power and ability is within their grasp, and that we are not all-powerful. Still, I cannot allow myself to be stopped this time._ As he speaks, his form flickers between the three you've yet seen, a dozen points in your temple aching with it. But when he falls silent for a long moment, Gaun returns. _This body will serve that purpose._

You frown. Your eyes slide past him, in the direction of the platform and the adra titan's head, but they've been swallowed by the void. "That thing's half-dead," you say. "It hasn't been connected to the veins for a long time, and half the souls inside got eaten. It would need--"

You stop. Your breath catches in your chest, and a sickly cold floods through you, fear that you shove deep, deep down lest it consume you. It's followed by a roaring heat, frustration boiling over into rage, and you give it free rein, to keep the fear at bay. Your vision narrows, centers on the blazing figure who stands before you, like quarry in your sights.

The figure with the sickle stares at you, unreadable save for the hidden thing now breaching the surface. You hold the knowledge in your mind as if it jumps from his to yours, just how many souls the adra titan would need to maintain the power to move and act in the world.

In that moment, if it were possible for a solitary mortal to kill a god for good, you think that you wouldn't hesitate.

"You rotten fucking bastard," you say, low and shaking. You see a flash of an ocean and an island, too, and a dozen other images and bits of understanding bleed into your mind, but you can't process them past the roaring in your ears. "_Fuck_ you. You're no better than the rest of them." The part of your mind that isn't dedicated to quivering, futile anger is caught up in trying to calculate your options. How quickly could you find a way to destroy the titan? Before Eothas activated it? Probably not, but at least you'd die trying.

You feel a great sadness radiating outward from the light as the figure gazes you. _Watcher_, Eothas-Gaun-whoever says, plaintive like it's him who will suffer for it, and it's all you can do not to lash out, not to call back the essence and strike with every ounce of power that you have. You know that he wouldn't react if you did, and it only makes you angrier. _There is more to it than that._

"_More_ than murdering thousands of people?" You laugh, a bitter smile pulling back the edges of your mouth like a snarl. "Please, enlighten me."

The figure's glow intensifies by a fraction, its conviction glimmering like the thousands of stars around you, and its forms flickering and cycling again, and then Eothas says, simply, _I will destroy the Wheel._

"You--" is all you get out, ready to argue and spit out every curse in every tongue you know, before your mind goes blank. Your eyes water in the light's intensity, and you have to drag the ability to speak back up from the dumbfounded depths where it flounders. All that comes out is a word: "What?"

The Dawnstars stand before you again, proud and gleaming. _There is a lost city to the south called Ukaizo, where all souls are funneled through the machines of the gods and into the Beyond,_ they say. _I will destroy those machines, and break the thing that gives the gods our power and keeps mortals in thrall. And when my work is done, I will leave this world forever._

You blink at them, watching as the Dawnstars fade back into Eothas, and the words sink in slowly. There are too many moving parts and too many harried thoughts tumbling about in your mind, and you pinch the bridge of your nose between two fingers, suddenly aware of a dull headache creeping up on you in earnest now. It isn't helped by the constant shifting of the figure before you. You look down at your feet, at the nothing you stand on and the stars underneath, at your reflection in the darkness outlined in a god's glow. But it only makes you dizzy, so you force yourself to look up at Eothas.

"Well," you say, and your voice feels far away, "that's one way to get the truth out."

You hold up a warning hand in the next second, lest Eothas try to speak further. To your surprise, he remains silent.

So you take a few more moments to breathe and think. To let your thoughts start arranging themselves in order of urgency. Your mind has always been your greatest weapon, and compartmentalizing comes with the territory, as does a rationality that you're a little bit famous for.

You can't stop a god. You don't like admitting that, even to yourself, but there's no time to wallow in it. You can't stop a god, but you don't disagree with his motivations, even if his execution leaves much to be desired. You can't stop a god, but maybe you can redirect him. If there's any god who'd let himself be redirected, it'd be this one. You see that now and know it for truth, even if you're itching to punch him right in his shiny face.

There is a lot to be furious about, a lot now boiling over and ready to lash out, but you take a breath and bring it under control. You have to think fast and big and smart, not angry, and you let yourself start processing all that you've picked up from Eothas's mind.

You can see the Deadfire and the armillary sphere of the Wheel's physical anchor point spinning away, memory and knowledge that isn't yours, and a dozen other impressions that set your mind to spinning with it. The Wheel does have a physical manifestation, you think, alongside its spiritual ones. It runs through every plane of existence, but something is... wrong with it? No, not wrong, exactly. Warped? Maybe. It isn't clear. "What happens after the Wheel is destroyed?" you ask.

_That is for mortals to solve,_ Eothas says, and again the Dawnstars flicker forth for a moment. Their conviction shines, carried on another overwhelming wave of something like admiration, of belief that kith could do just that. You bat it aside irritably. _And either gods and mortals will find a way to move forward together, or they will fail together. But this cycle that we are all caught in will end. _The void quakes with the last word, a tremor of promise.

You take to pacing the vast expanse of night all around you, because if you don't give your nervous energy an outlet, you might scream. Your god-lit reflection follows you, and you half-expect your feet to send ripples out into the darkness. They don't. Eothas remains where he is, but the figure tracks you and stays facing you.

"Did it exist before the Engwithans?" you ask finally, looking back at Eothas. It's a question that you've had for a while now, among many others, but now is not the time for the multitude on your tongue. The short answer will suffice. "The Wheel?"

_... Yes,_ Eothas says slowly, and now his curiosity follows you too, palpable waves of it emanating from the figure watching you and from the mind in the titan beyond. Good. You've caught that much, with only a few questions. You just have to hold it. _Though in a different form._

You nod once. That's what you'd hoped to hear, and it's the only answer you really need. You don't stop to ask if that different form has something to do with the impression of wrongness you'd picked up from his thoughts. If this works, there will be time for that later.

Instead, your feet take you back and forth, and your fingers begin to twitch with thought. You have nothing to fidget with, except the pendant at your neck, and the wheel rolls underneath your restless hands. You stare out at the stars, your mind speeding at full-tilt, stopping only to connect disparate thoughts into something unified -- Godhammer, resonant frequency, distant memory of an excavation gone explosively wrong, re-amplification mechanisms underlying half your powers and the adra beneath your fingers.

A theory sketches itself out, building upon all you know, all you've learned, all you've seen. It's hasty and broad, but you can worry about the details later. All that matters is that it's plausible, and that you can sway a god with it. No pressure, Watcher.

"So," you say, and you cease pacing and step towards Eothas instead, squaring up in his radiant face again, "you want to destroy the Wheel, and you think martyring yourself to do it will justify the means?"

The figure flutters infinitesimally, like it doesn't know what aspect to settle on. _No,_ Eothas says, and though he doesn't react to your posturing, you can feel something giving, a small flickering of hesitation. With kith, you'd push on it directly using a cipher's touch. With a god, you don't dare. _It is not a matter of justification. It is a matter of options. Reaching Ukaizo and breaking the machines there will require considerable power._

"And dragging that big fucking thing across half the planet is your only option?" you demand.

Eothas is silent for a long moment. The flickering grows a shade brighter. _It is not as easy as you think for a god to act upon the world,_ he says. _My attempt with Waidwen was... short-sighted. Different measures must be taken._

An opening blossoms before you, lit by that glimmer of hesitation, because a tremor like an aftershock follows Waidwen's name. You can't look closely enough to get a handle on it, but its waves break upon the shore of your mind a lot like guilt does. You hope that's what it is, because you're about to bank on it. "And that's it, isn't it?" you say. "You'd trust us to find our way after, but not to see the deed done."

The star-strewn void is still, and so is Eothas. You don't breathe for a moment, as still as stone yourself, letting the moment hang suspended before you dig in again.

"Magran didn't make the Godhammer. She helped," you say, and you let your anger boil up again.

You need it. You need your conviction to shine like his does, and you need him to listen, and it's an ugly and sudden revelation, to be cognizant of the fact that you're relying on a god again. That you're relying on _faith_. Your anger steams out of you, and you hurl the full force of it at him. You pull the lid off of your fear long enough to weave it in for good measure.

"Kith made it," you snarl. "Kith made _you_. But you're very quick to give up on us after all. I don't think you've been humbled near enough. I think you're full of _shit_." You suck in a breath. "You care about us? You want us to find our own way? _Then act like it._"

You stop, your heart hammering and your ears roaring with it. But Eothas is silent for a while longer, and as your heartbeat finds a steadier rhythm, you can feel the great sea of his mind churning with restlessness. With thought. You have a sudden, morbid desire to delve deep into it like you can kith minds, just to see what would happen.

The figure continues to shift in your perception, but the outlines of the women and the sickle and the lantern aren't as defined as before, coming in erratically and then fizzling out. And then finally, Eothas seems to settle. He no longer flickers or shines quite so brightly, hardly more than the glow of the dusty strips of light painted throughout the stars, though you still can't make out a clear face.

_I will see the Wheel destroyed,_ Eothas says, and your stomach flip-flops, _but if I were to seek another option,_ and then your chest squeezes vice-tight and giddy, _I would need a means of operating in this world._

Your breathing is still coming in a little short, and your head is pounding dully now, but you draw yourself up. "_I'll_ do it." Which is just about the most recklessly dumb thing you've ever offered to do, and that's saying a lot, but you don't stop to think about it. You can have a crisis later.

The shining figure stares at you, faceless and motionless. There is no surprise in the depths of his mind. But there is a deep well of something churning within him, something that you can only scrape the surface of -- revelation, maybe. Wonder. _You would break the Wheel, Watcher?_

You swallow and shrug. "Why not?" you say, and you push your mind up against his as far as you dare, to show him that you're serious. You pull back at once, like snatching a hand from hot metal. "I don't... disagree with you. And I wouldn't mind kneecapping those bastards."

The mind all around you churns and ebbs, and you don't hear Waidwen's name, but you feel it, feel the weight behind it, a dozen other little impressions slipping through cracks left by aftershocks. Eothas had loved him, you think, and you don't know why you're so surprised. Eothas had loved him and gotten him killed, and that, you know, is the true peril of the god before you.

_It would be dangerous, _Eothas says._ One kith is easily stopped._

"Then we'll have to be quiet about it, won't we?" you say, and you step around the name hovering unspoken. You aren't that cruel, even if he deserves it. "That was your problem before. Made a lot of noise for all the wrong ears. The Leaden Key's been so successful because Thaos knew to work in shadows." You grimace at the reminder of Thaos. A god's flunky skulking about in the dark, just like him. Wonderful. "And if my way doesn't work, then by all means," you wave a hand vaguely in the direction of the titan, "take that thing for a walk."

Eothas considers it. Nothing moves -- not you, not him, not the patterns of stars or the reflections beneath. And then the figure dips its head to you. _What would you propose?_

You are honestly so surprised to have gotten this far that it takes you a few seconds to remember the thread of a theory you'd been pulling together a few minutes prior. You take a deep breath. "The Wheel... it's just energy, right? A system of channeling energy between kith and the gods?"

_That is a simple way of describing it,_ Eothas says,_ but yes._

You exercise a tremendous amount of restraint to refrain from snapping at him about what simplicity must look like to a god. "Then it has what we need," you say. "You've got all the power you could ask for already cycling though it. You don't need extra souls or the essence of a god when you've got the thing that feeds the gods turning away under you."

The words spill out of your mouth with a touch more excitement than you expect. It's only a problem of engineering essence to achieve a desired effect beyond one's ordinary capabilities, and you've been doing that since you could talk.

"A small reaction-- relatively small, that is, it'd probably be something as big as the Godhammer, or bigger." You pause, your mind already turning towards the issue of how to craft such a thing, and you tug it back on course. That's another problem for later, and you'll need everything that Eothas can tell you about the Wheel, besides. "But if we can engineer a relatively small disturbance in its flow, something that upsets the essence it's conducting, and do it in such a way that it feeds back into the reaction input... the worse one gets, the worse the other gets, continuously destabilizing the machine you're trying to break, until..."

_Until it becomes too much,_ Eothas says.

"Exactly," you say breathlessly, and for a moment, you forget that you're talking to a god. Or lecturing, more like. "It'll overload itself with its own weight, if we give it the right push. It's just a feedback loop." You stop, caution crashing back into you as you remember where you are and what you're discussing. The infinite void of god-lit night glitters around you. "Does that sound... at all plausible?"

You try not to fidget while you wait for an answer. One of your hands automatically returns to the pendant at your neck, absently turning the wheel.

_It... might be,_ Eothas says slowly, wonderingly, and you're really going to have to take a seat soon, because your legs have acquired an ooze-like quality. _And you would do this?_

"_We_ would do this. Together," you say, and something shivers in the air around you, in the mind of the god who listens to you so intently that you feel the weight of his attention bearing down on you like the breaking light of dawn. The shiver is not unlike the aftershocks that seem to follow a certain name. "Not like Waidwen," you add. "But building something of that magnitude is going to need a... divine touch." A Godhammer pointed at the Wheel this time. There is precedent, and feedback is an easy enough thing to manipulate, in theory. Especially if all you've got to do is wipe a few machines off the face of Eora.

You can feel your words sinking into Eothas. Can feel his mind aligning with yours and seeing the possibilities therein, seeing what you know, what you're capable of, and you let him look. But he says, _Ukaizo is protected,_ and you are abruptly reminded of Iovara for reasons you don't want to dwell on. He isn't arguing with you. He's seeing how you answer.

You spread your hands in half a shrug. "So was this place," you say, and you don't need to summon up any anger to fuel your conviction. You know that he can see it. "And the keep above us. So was Durgan's Battery and Sun in Shadow, and every other damned place I've fought my way through. I always find a way."

Help shouldn't be difficult to secure, either. You are the Roadwarden of Caed Nua, and you already have a god's ear. You know a few people you can ask, your mentor among them, who aren't going to be too happy with the revelation of all that the gods have been hiding, even though the thought of contacting them makes your stomach turn. You're a little less certain about the friends you'd picked up since that fateful night with the caravan, but you're sure that at least some of them will have your back, if nothing else. And you can lie to whomever else you need to, in order to get where you need to go.

The weight of the god of light's attention doesn't make your legs any less shaky, but you hold yourself steady, and let him feel everything roiling in your thoughts, and wait for him to answer.

Something stirs in the mind before you, behind you, all around you. Something like that admiration again, but much more raw and searing. You resist the urge to turn away from it.

_Very well,_ Eothas says. _We will try your way._

You sit down hard, then, somehow stumbling your way back to the bottom step of the platform and not quite collapsing onto it. You look up at him, hardly daring to believe it. "Seriously?"

The blazing figure stands as placidly as ever, following your movements, but you get a sense of... hesitance. Like it'd be angled away sheepishly if it wasn't an illusion. _Perhaps you are right,_ he says, _and I have not yet learned humility. But I am listening. I hear you, Watcher of Caed Nua. _Eothas steps forward and kneels before you, at eye level. _You have put your faith in me, and so I will put mine in you. In kith._

Your face grows hot. "Okay," you say, your voice teetering on the edge of inaudible. "Okay." The logistics spin in your head, too many steps to deal with all at once. You're going to need some paper to start writing it all down -- that's step one. Belatedly, you remember to say, "Thank you," and it's even sincere, if strangled. You really don't want to hear more of his own blinding sincerity, though, so you make your voice work. "So... first thing, we need to lay low, yeah? Can you... keep hiding here?" You wave a hand over your shoulder, at the titan. "I have an idea."

_Another idea?_ Eothas asks, but he nods, and it takes you a few moments to grasp that he's making a _joke_. 

"Get used to it," you say, a little faintly. You clear your throat. "I'm going to need what you know, but I can't keep coming back here to talk to you every time I have a question. I think I could make something to solve that." Your hand plays with the pendant at your neck, your thoughts drawn backwards, to the adra dragon. She'd been able to cast her mind far and wide, and you have no doubt that Eothas is capable of the same thing, but the fact remains that you aren't. The dragon had also possessed an amulet capable of transferring her soul to another vessel, and replicating the mechanisms behind that according to slightly different specifications will be easy enough. "Something that could hold enough of your essence to give me a channel back to you. And it'd be a window for you, I suppose. Where I go, you go."

You push yourself to your feet, willing your unsteady legs to keep you upright, and the figure rises too, stepping back. You find yourself face-to-face with him again, both of your reflections gleaming motionless in the darkness below.

"I need to work on that," you say. "And think." And hold your daughter, and talk to your Steward, and gather your wits somewhere far above the roiling essence around you, until your head stops spinning. You make yourself stare into the empty face of light, and you can't help the anxiety winding through your stomach. You trust this god a little more than the others, upon consideration, and your cipher's sense is rarely wrong, but he is still a god. "Can I trust you to stay put? Or are you going to go on a rampage as soon as my back is turned?"

_You have my word, Watcher,_ Eothas says, and the sea that is his mind moves, but the thoughts that push against yours are only the very tips of waves breaking against a shore. They carry that blinding sincerity with them, which offers itself to your mind like a handshake. _We do this together._

You stare at him a moment longer and nod.

The void evaporates, the darkness and the stars and the radiant light of the being before you all peeling away, and you find yourself back in the fourth level of the Endless Paths. You look at the dank stone walls lit by brazier light, by the eerie green glow of the titan, and your legs want to give out again, but you take a breath and turn. The looming titan's head now pulses with brilliance no longer hidden, its eyes burning and its brow ablaze with a jagged crown of sun-and-stars. You stare up at it, rigid, and take one step back from the base of the platform, then another.

You've hardly taken three steps towards the corridor that leads to the third level when a thought careens into you, arresting your footsteps. "Wait!" you say, and you spin on your heels. "Do you remember someone named Woden Teylecg?"

The light emanating from the titan pulses, bright enough that this section of the level needs no firelight. The field of essence and the ether stir restlessly as Eothas's mind reaches out through them to brush up against yours. _I do,_ he says, and his voice in your mind doesn't ring quite like it did in the illusion, but it does nothing to help your aching head. _I know of his brother too. He is bright in your mind._

"Yeah, well, you owe him," you say again. "And you're going to tell him everything he wants to know." It's more combative than you mean to sound, but you keep waiting for something to go wrong. For Eothas to drop the pretense. For your efforts to amount to nothing before you've even begun.

_Of course,_ Eothas says, and there is nothing disingenuous in him that you can sense. But much of him lies beyond you still, and you aren't in the habit of trusting a good thing until it's proven itself. _It is the least I can do._

You stand there, attuning yourself to the way his thoughts ebb and flow within the titan and spill out into the essence around you, as much as you dare. Listening for anything that speaks otherwise, anything to let you know that you need to run as soon as your feet hit the surface. You hear nothing, feel nothing. "Good," you say, and you turn to go before you can give into your reckless impulse to dig deep into the mind of a god.

* * *

You stay on your feet until you make it out if the Paths, clambering out of the hatch and immediately slithering to the ground in the light of day. You're dimly aware of several of your guards clustering around you, their cries of "my lady!" and "ma'am!" overlapping with the worried voice in your head. You hadn't even realized that your mind had been absent of the Steward's presence for a while until she floods through it, rooting around underneath your aching skull and looking you over as only she can.

_My lady, are you alright?_ she demands, more frantic than you've ever heard her. _You weren't answering me. I was about to send a squadron after you._

"I'm fine," you say, for her benefit and for the guards. "I'm fine. Everything's fine."

You have half a mind to tell them to start an evacuation, and you keep waiting for the ground to tremble beneath your feet, for the chapel to crumble in the grip of the adra fingers holding it close. But nothing happens. Nothing stirs. Only your hands shake, violent and uncontrollable, as the guards pull you to your feet. You clutch your hands together tightly, trying to still them, and take several deep breaths.

"It's fine," you say, exhaling slowly. "It's been handled." Your eyes find Ximena's lieutenant, the elven woman who stands nearest to you, armed to the teeth. "Tell the captain I want to talk to her. There's someone I need to find, and I need feelers put out. I'll be in the main keep."

Your guards are used to your eccentricities, and they start to relax, but the lieutenant gives you a side-eye even as she nods. "Sure you're alright, ma'am?"

You nod. You're really not, and the world around you has an unreal edge, like you've been underground for years instead of hours. You're unsteady on your feet like you're punch-drunk, your stomach turning over on itself and your temples throbbing, and you know, distantly, that you're only just now feeling the full force of the fear you'd suppressed below. But you shoo your guards away and head for the main keep, letting the Steward's presence envelop your mind like a shield.

Talking is difficult, so you open the floodgates of your thoughts and let her peruse as she wills. Her speechlessness rebounds onto you, and neither of you speak, until you're within the great hall, until you collapse into the throne over which she presides. Its marble arms can't hold you, but her thoughts do, curling around yours tightly. You lean into them gratefully, allowing your mind to spill over in any which direction it pleases, focused on nothing at all. You sit with your elbows on your knees and your hands covering your mouth, breathing through your trembling fingers.

_Your bravery knows no bounds,_ the Steward says, achingly gentle, speaking only into your mind. She already knows -- this can't get out, except to those you invite into the fold.

You aren't sure if you just made a deal with a god or a devil, and you aren't sure there's a difference. But it doesn't feel brave. Just desperate.

You take another deep breath. _We'll see,_ you say, and then you start painstakingly pulling your thoughts into order, mapping out and prioritizing and planning. _I need you to send a messenger to Dyrford._


	2. Chapter 2

In Brighthollow's lab, all of your projects have been pushed aside, and most of the lab's surfaces are occupied with fresh notes, spools of copper, spare parts, and tools. Since you emerged from the Paths, you've been seized with a desire to have Vela in your sights at all times, and she works on a little project of her own at the small table you had built for her, coloring away under Pumpkin the tabby cat's watchful eye. The little white wurm, not-so-affectionately named Razor Fang by Hiravias when you'd put it to a group vote, curls contentedly around your neck and shoulders, tangled in your braids and fast asleep.

The Steward lets you know when your guests arrive, but you're utterly focused on twining delicate copper wires together, and so they find you in the lab. You don't let Vela know, and her delighted gasp of surprise draws a tired smile out of you. She throws her drawing pencils aside and runs out of the lab proper and into the outer room, and you follow her to find Edér obligingly swinging her around with a big grin on his face, though there's a troubled set to his expression that he can't quite smooth out.

"You keep growing like that, you're fixing to be taller than me one day," he says as he sets Vela down, giving you a little nod.

Vela giggles. "No I'm not!" she says and throws herself at the Grieving Mother next.

The woman runs a hand through Vela's hair as Vela hugs her leg. "It is good to see you, little one," she murmurs. There's a name she goes by in Dyrford, and she is brighter and more visible to others now, but your initial impression of her had never once shifted. She had surprised you, after Sun in Shadow, when she had asked you to keep thinking of her in that way. Maybe it's penance, maybe it's not, but you'd obliged, and your mind touches hers in greeting as usual, though you hold most of your thoughts close this time.

She notices, but she waits patiently as you turn to Vela next, who is just as delighted to find that Edér has brought along the war dog that you'd "borrowed" from the Iron Flail as a pup. It's in the middle of a pack of your other dogs that had followed the newcomers, being hissed at by Pumpkin and by Razor Fang now hanging from your shoulder, and you wade through the animals to reach Vela.

"Now," you say conspiratorially, and Vela's ears twitch as she turns her attention to you, "I know they just got here, but we need to talk about boring grown-up things, and I heard," you pause, and Vela bounces on her feet impatiently, "that the cook has a surprise for you. Is it okay if we play later?"

Vela nods at once with a bright, "Okay!" then deals out another round of hugs and heads for the hearth, with all of the animals save for Razor Fang in tow. The wurm returns to her place around your shoulders with a satisfied chirp, and for a moment, you watch Vela trek across the main hall with her gaggle of followers. The cook has instructions to keep her occupied for as long as possible, and then her nursemaid will take over after that with a scavenger hunt, if need be. You should have plenty of time to talk.

Edér and Grieving Mother both watch you, their sandpaper apprehension buzzing against your skin. Your message had asked them to come quickly, with no reason given and only an urgency expressed, and perhaps it had been a little too cryptic, but you hadn't wanted to take chances. "You need to sit down," you say, with a nod to the lab's interior.

Edér drags two extra chairs in from the outer room, and you close the door to the lab behind you, then pull the stool out from the shadow of your workstation, positioning it in front of the chairs. But you don't sit just yet. You're too wired, too preoccupied by the thought of suddenly having to vocalize things when you never have a need to with the Steward, and you drift back to the workstation, tidying it absently. Your pendant is no longer around your neck and instead sits on the surface of the workstation, with half a new circle of wiring and plating built around it. The splintered amulet from the adra dragon is beside it, broken down even further.

Grieving Mother's mind circles yours cautiously, not asking entrance but conveying her concern at your recalcitrance.

"Do we need to be worried?" Edér asks, even though he already is.

Your hands hover over the pendant. "I... don't know," you say carefully. "Not right now, I don't think. But it's..."

Your voice trails off. You mean to ease them -- ease Edér -- into it. You mean to get there by way of a bit of explanation. You mean to say it in a way that won't blindside them.

What leaves your mouth is, "Eothas is under the keep."

Edér blinks up at you.

You let Grieving Mother's mind fold into your own, just enough that she can see what you mean and see the truth of it. You don't let her absorb the whole thing. Edér won't be able to keep up with the rapid mental back-and-forth of ciphers, and you won't do that to him when this concerns his god. Grieving Mother stares at you in utter astonishment, and you grimace.

"Uh," Edér says, "what?" His face says that he thinks he heard you wrong. You wish he had.

Your grimace deepens. "Eothas," you say, "is under the keep. He's, ah..." you clear your throat and gingerly take a seat on the stool, opposite them, "... he's in the statue." Around your neck, Razor Fang stirs, yawning in disgruntlement at being disturbed.

So much for easing Edér into it. He blinks rapidly, then inhales like something is going to come out retching if he doesn't. "Tell me you're joking," he says, a little pleading.

You shake your head, and to give your hands something to do, you stroke Razor Fang's little snout where her head hangs down over your shoulder, her eyes blinking sleepily. "I talked to him."

Edér gapes at you, his mouth working soundlessly. "Eothas?" he manages to get out.

You nod.

"Wh--" Edér chokes on the question. "Eothas is _here_?"

You nod again. You're conscious of the fact that Grieving Mother's mind is afire with curiosity, of the fact that she waits for answers. But she is patient, silent, her mind offered only as an arm to lean against as she absorbs the agitation that spills out of you, magnified by Edér's own upset bleeding into you.

"What's he doing?" Edér demands. He leans forward convulsively, hovering at the edge of the chair, and you are not looking forward to telling him that his god had a plan that involved the deaths of thousands before you talked him off the ledge. Not to mention the end goal itself. The one you agreed to and don't even disagree with. "How'd he get here? What..." He stops and stares at you, his mouth hanging open.

Razor Fang lifts her head, observing the tense atmosphere and finding it unsatisfactory. She locates the primary source and launches herself from you to Edér, though it's only to settle into his lap, as if that will solve matters. She never bites him, which puts him in an exclusive club comprised of you and Vela as well, those spared the ministrations of her admittedly razor-like fangs. Even through his distress, Edér's hands are gentle as he shifts her into a more comfortable position.

"He said it was a good place for him to... re-form," you say, and you don't know how you manage to keep your voice so calm. Maybe it's just with Grieving Mother's help, maybe it's because Edér needs you to be steady right now. Maybe it's just that they believe you so readily. "After getting blown up." You don't think that's all of it, and you still don't know how long Eothas has been down there. You don't think it's been very long at all, but it's an easy answer to start with.

Edér nods, because it's easily digested. His eyes are locked on you, asking for more, though it seems like words have failed him.

"Eothas," you say, and even though you'd put thought into how to approach this, words aren't coming to you smoothly today either, "wants to... unseat the gods. Not anything like Woedica," you add. "He... wants their power over kith to end."

Edér's face is blank. "How..." he begins, then has to start again, disbelief coating his voice, "... how does he plan to do that? What did the Saint's War have to do with that?"

"He wanted to reveal what we learned at Sun in Shadow to the world," you say, and not for the first time since you emerged from the Paths, you wish Iovara was here. You've gone to visit her many a time in the intervening years, and she always steadies you like no other. If she _was_ here, she would tell you that you don't need her to find your feet. You would tell her that it'd be nice anyway. "The truth of the gods. That's why Waidwen wanted to march on the rest of the Eastern Reach."

Edér is noticeably paler now. "Is that what..." he murmurs, then, "... Woden..." and it sounds more like he's speaking to a ghost than to anyone in the room. In his lap, Razor Fang stirs and nudges at one of his hands, and he pets her automatically, drawing forth a few contented chirps.

"Eothas told me he remembers Woden," you say, and Edér's gaze snaps back to you. "I told him you'd be by to ask."

Edér's eyes go wide, like it hadn't occurred to him until that moment, what his god being nearby really means. He looks frozen solid at the possibility.

"I could ask him for you, if you want," you say gently.

Edér unfreezes with a jerky shake of his head. "No," he says. "No. I need... I need to talk to him. I need to see him." He draws in a breath and frowns down at the ground. "I mean, everything we learned... wanting to unseat them's not so bad, I guess. The truth... I... did I...?" He exhales slowly, and without needing to see into his mind, you know what paths his thoughts are following. "I fought against him, I--"

"No," you say darkly, cutting him off. "You weren't wrong. He needs to be checked just as much as the rest of them do."

Edér freezes again, his eyes fixed on you, wary.

"And you are the one who has checked him this time, Watcher," Grieving Mother says, speaking at last. "I feel it in your thoughts, as turbulent as a storm. You have made a deal with him."

You wonder how much is bleeding out of you no matter what you do, for her to have picked up on that when you're holding her at arm's length. Edér's head swivels to look at her, and then he looks back to you. He's overflowing with stress and shock, and it buffets your mind like storm winds rattling shutters, no matter how much you hold yourself and your cipher's senses back on principle, so that you don't see much more into a mind than what is easily observed in a body. You itch with the desire to fix it, to make it right, but that isn't something you're capable of offering.

You find yourself back on your feet, drifting to the workstation once more, and you pick up the wire that you'd been twining together with pliers. You start twisting it again, letting your mind's unerring senses guide your hands as you lean back against the workstation instead.

Edér stands too, and with an indignant squawk, Razor Fang departs his company and lands on Grieving Mother's knee. The wurm looks put out upon discovering that she is no longer in the presence of someone she spares her usual gnawing, but she curls up meekly and doesn't unleash her teeth when the woman levels a long look at her.

Edér circles around the stool and approaches you. It looks as if he wants to reach out, but instead he stops near the fireplace. "What deal?" he asks quietly, the fire glimmering and crackling behind him. Worry and unease radiate from his thoughts, a sick anticipation of something he doesn't want to hear, and it's another thing in a long list of what you're going to hold Eothas accountable for -- making his believers afraid. "What does he want?"

You complete another loop of wire with a delicate twist of the pliers. "The Wheel gives the gods their power," you say, and you have to push the next words out, past the flopping about of your insides. Best just to get it out and be done with it. "So he wants to break it."

Grieving Mother's back straightens like a rod, causing Razor Fang to peevishly flex her tiny wings. Edér gapes at you again, and for a moment, the only sound is the crackling and popping of the fireplace. In the silence, you think about how ludicrous it is, discussing such a thing in the lab of your formerly cursed keep, under which a god hides.

Edér recovers a little faster this time, shaking his head like he's trying to clear it. "You... you're serious," he says, his eyes searching you like he's looking for the joke.

You nod.

"Well," Edér says, faintly, "... where's that leave us?"

"The Wheel ensures the lives of future generations," Grieving Mother says, her voice hard, and now she's the one holding her mind back from you. A stone wall stands between your thoughts and hers, though you get the sense of her own turbulence raging behind it. "Does Eothas intend to leave us bereft?"

"He told me it existed before Engwith," you say. "Which means it's a natural phenomenon, which means it's not dependent the gods, which means it's only a matter of... restoring that, or getting it back on course, or replicating something that existed once. Or finding some other way. If the Engwithans could do it, then so can we." That, you're more or less certain about. The Glanfathans alone have more mathematical prowess than their predecessors had, and animancy is growing fast despite every effort to suppress it. The Leaden Key wouldn't have tried so hard to eradicate it in the Dyrwood if that meant nothing. Most importantly, the natural law on the universe is on your side. "And Eothas wants us to control our own futures."

"You agree with him," Grieving Mother says, and though her voice has lost some of its hard edges, accusation seeps out of the wall she's put up. "You will help him to carry out this act."

Edér stares at you, at a loss for words.

You cease twisting the wire, lest you make a critical mistake in aligning the intended flow. When it is finished and all pieces are attached to your pendant, attuned both physically and with a cipher's touch, it will, in theory, utilize a process opposite the positive feedback you'd described for Eothas: a loop of negative feedback that will hopefully keep the essence of a god stable and in check.

"I do agree with his reasoning," you say. "I don't think anyone should have the power that the gods do. They're not just... things for people to believe in, or-- or excuses, they're... dangerous constructs with agendas. And their foundations are rotten." You fall silent for a moment, gritting your teeth at the reminder of your Awakened memories, no longer intrusive but not forgotten, either. "But I didn't just agree to it for fun. I... did it to talk him down."

Edér's face twists with realization. He takes a few steps back, to lean against the cluttered desk extending from the bookcase. His fingers grip the edges so tightly that the wood groans. "What was he gonna do?" he asks hollowly. "Something worse than the Saint's War?"

"I don't know about _worse_." You aren't quite sure how the body count would have evened out in the end, and that's a sickening thought all on its own. You set the wire aside, no longer able to settle yourself with it. But there's still a restlessness in your fingers, one that has not ceased since you came back to the surface, and you crack your knuckles. "He would've needed the statue to get to where he needs to go, otherwise, and that thing would need upwards of several thousand souls to power it. It was help him, or watch him go for a stroll."

It's hard to look at the stricken expression on Edér's face. Grieving Mother doesn't outwardly react to the statement, but the wall between your mind and hers sinks, and her thoughts tentatively nudge at yours again. You let her sift through the memories and see for herself, and her consternation roils beneath the calm surface of her face, seeping into you and making your fingers twitch even more. But you don't shut it out. You don't hold her at arm's length anymore. If you're going to ask them for help, you need to be able to weather more stress than just your own.

Edér finds his way back to his chair and sits down hard, dropping his head into his hands. "I just... I don't know what to think," he mutters.

You step forward, forgoing the stool in favor of kneeling down in front of him. On Grieving Mother's lap, Razor Fang stirs again. She stretches her wings and leaps, her claws digging into your arm as she latches on to you.

"I don't need you to have it all figured out," you say, as you extricate the wurm from your arm. Edér's eyes rise to meet yours, and you push Razor Fang up to her usual spot around your shoulders instead. "I just need you to trust me." You look up at Grieving Mother, and you speak to both of them. "And I need your help, if you're willing. Eothas wants to destroy the Wheel no matter what. At least this way, we can make sure that kith are in control of how it happens."

Grieving Mother meets your gaze, her eyes piercing, her posture rigid. Her mind intertwines deeper with yours, seeking out older memories that you don't hold back from her -- long years of metaphysical study, of growing power. She is troubled, unsettled, but there's a spark of curiosity in her too, and below it all, something rather like faith. She lets it rise up to the surface, and you breathe with it, taken aback.

"Can you guarantee that the future is assured?" she asks, but even so, there's little doubt in her voice. Only a desire to secure an oath, to know that you are committed. "Can you protect the generations after us a second time?"

"I can," you say, and like below, you let your conviction spill over, defiant and proud and blazing. If not you, then you'll pave the way for someone else. "I will."

That conviction is pulled into Grieving Mother's mind, and her thoughts turn it over as if to examine for chinks, for weaknesses. Her acceptance filters through your mind -- not necessarily of the situation, but of you. "Then my strength is yours, Watcher."

Something tight and tense within you unwinds, just a bit. You let her feel it, let your gratefulness trickle into her mind.

When you look back to Edér, he's still hunched in the chair, all of his usual cheer long evaporated, and a ragged exhaustion in its place, a fatigue older than the years you've known him. He exhales slowly under your gaze. "Damn it, Kit," he says, but there's something fond in the words. Fond and frustrated and nervous, leaking out of him like you've cut gashes into his armor, and you keep yourself from listening too closely. "You asking me on another crazy errand?"

You give him a strained smile. "I didn't want to leave you out of the fun."

"Very kind of you," Edér says, and something softens around his eyes as he looks at you. "Well... I'm here, aren't I? 'Course I trust you. It's everything else I'm struggling with."

"You have only just learned a terrible truth," Grieving Mother says, and Edér glances over at her in surprise. Even though she is no longer hidden from the world, even though she serves as Dyrford's midwife, you've found that she still slips easily out of other people's awareness at times. You know it will be a while before that ceases, and perhaps it won't at all. "Your mind needs time to come to terms with it. There is no need to feel ashamed of your doubt."

Edér swallows. "... Yeah," he says. "Yeah, guess you're right." His brows furrow. "Uh, could you not... do that cipher thing? I appreciate the intent, but I'd rather not know if someone knows what I'm thinking, if it's all the same to you."

Grieving Mother's eyebrows arch. "Of course," she says, and her perturbation swirls like an undertow. "I apologize." Her mouth closes tightly, and you hear the next words in your head, as if they are too difficult to express aloud. _I... forgot. I did not realize what I was doing._

_It's okay,_ you tell her. Edér is more forgiving than most, and you know how hard it is to break habits, to check oneself. To pull oneself back behind a line better left uncrossed. You wouldn't have been so patient with her five years ago if you hadn't had firsthand experience, and it's most of the reason why you'd called them here in the first place.

You turn back to Edér. "She's got a point," you say. "How about a break?"

Edér draws in a slow breath, then nods. Some of the upset radiating from him dims at the thought.

You get to your feet, prompting an irritated chirp from Razor Fang. "Vela's got a scavenger hunt today," you say, very gravely, and half a smile flickers across Edér's face. "She's going to be disappointed if we aren't there."

* * *

Edér teams up with Vela, and you team up with Grieving Mother, and you comb through the grounds of Caed Nua in the light of the afternoon sun. It's Vela doing most of the searching, with Edér trailing behind her scratching his head and loudly proclaiming how stumped he is, and about half a dozen animals frolicking around them at any given moment. You and Grieving Mother stay in view of them, and you do a little searching yourself when Vela misses things, so that her nursemaid will have less cleanup later.

At first, you don't bring up the things on your mind with Grieving Mother. A frown has taken up residence on her face since the lab, and you wait until she extends her thoughts to you, until the threads of your two minds intertwine once more.

At the botanical gardens, you watch as Vela becomes thoroughly distracted from the hunt by the thrill of tackling Uncle Edér with a surprise ambush. She's certainly got a penchant for fighting, you think, watching as Edér falls over dramatically. You suppose that's to be expected, considering who's raising her and the tribe she comes from, but still. You've tried to keep the uglier parts of your life separate from her, as much as possible.

_Your mind holds a question for me,_ Grieving Mother says finally, her thoughts nudging up against yours.

You let her in, leaning down to scoop up a piece of awakened adra half-buried in the garden. It hums with a faint energy beneath your fingers, ancient and harmless and not all that different from the adra pendant at your neck, only unrefined.

You'd learned how to interweave adra and essence and machinery and a cipher's powers, stripping away artificial divides between magic and science, because your mentor had unearthed techniques from memories buried in Engwithan ruins, digging up the world lines as only a cipher could. She'd discovered more, too, burning questions with no answers, and for that, her own people had driven her out. But she'd pursued and learned much since then, in some ways surpassing even the Engwithans' capabilities -- an animancer in all but name, but so much more than that, and unafraid of crossing lines to get there.

You aren't looking forward to seeing her again.

_I need a favor,_ you say, and you let the adra pulse in your hands, instead of stuffing it into the satchel with the other scavenged items. _But it's a big one. If you'd rather not, please tell me._

The animals are in on it now, ganging up on Edér along with Vela, and you can tell that he doesn't have to force his laughter. The ghost of a smile replaces the frown on Grieving Mother's face as she watches, but her mind's voice is solemn. _You wish for me to remain here._

You smile too, as Edér leaps to his feet, grabs Vela, and lifts her high in the air, and she laughs the shrieking laugh of a child who has no other worries._ I'll need to leave at some point,_ you say. You turn the adra over in your hands, running your fingers over the smooth surface littered with tiny imperfections. _I come and go often, and I don't keep a regular schedule. People are used to that. If I could make appearances every now and then, between my travels..._

_You would have me weave those illusions._ Grieving Mother's mind and voice hold no accusation, no surprise. Only a calm acceptance.

Your frown down at the adra, your insides twisting uncomfortably. You know it's a lot to ask of her, that she is earnestly trying to live a life free of the lies so easily spun by a cipher's mind, and that returning to such behavior will not help. _I'll have a cover story in place, and the Steward will run the keep in my absence,_ you say. _But I don't know how many times I'll be back, and people will talk if I disappear for too long._ You'll have illusions in place too, to keep from being recognized in places where the risk runs high, places where you won't officially be according to all records. _If you don't want to do this, I'll understand._

Grieving Mother's mind roils again, with careful thought. You see flashes of an adra plateau, of the chapel nearby, of your own face in other times and places. _All of this to save a few thousand souls?_ she asks. _Even if it threatens countless others?_

_They'll be threatened either way. _The greatest harm reduction. That's what you'd once told Iovara about the souls you'd returned to the Hollowborn. You can't fix everything, but you can mitigate the circumstances, and get something out of it in the process.

_It is not the only way,_ Grieving Mother says, and you see a circle of constellations glimmering in a pool of night. _You could alert the other gods._

Your hands wrap tightly around the adra fragment, and it reacts to your trepidation, glowing a little brighter. The notion carries a peculiar sense of power, an uncomfortable tug between extremes. It is perhaps the only other thing you could do to curb Eothas, and your stomach turns with it.

What would happen, if you did? Would it start another war, with an even bigger body count? And for what? For Eothas to succeed anyway? For him to fail, and the others to remain in power? For kith to suffer no matter what? Your thoughts are consumed with images of Cayron's Scar and the Abbey of the Fallen Moon. What else could the gods unleash upon Eora, if they felt threatened enough, if it came down to a fight?

Or maybe they'd be too busy hemming and hawing to do a damn thing.

_No,_ you say._ I won't do that._ Hylea isn't half bad, and you could stomach talking to her again, or maybe to Abydon, but not enough to rat out someone you agree with in principle.

Grieving Mother's mind probes at yours, inquisitive. You glimpse your own face and form in her eyes, her memories, a fleeting series of overlapping impressions that oscillate like she's trying to figure you out. You, a turned back who stands at the head of a pack. You, a challenger who tears down vessels and dragons and men in grand robes. You, a cipher who rends minds as easily as flesh. You, a woman who holds an infant carefully like it'll break if you don't.

_If you side with him against his kin,_ Grieving Mother says, and the impressions don't settle, don't coalesce, _you may very well incur their wrath._

_I don't care,_ you say, though it isn't a pleasant thought, _if it means we have a say in how this goes down. That's what's important here too, more than just the souls. Kith playing a part._

_Kith,_ Grieving Mother says, _or you?_

It isn't asked coldly or cruelly, only cautiously. She knows, better than most, the allure of power, the temptation to assert that one knows best when in possession of it. And you aren't going to pretend otherwise: the power that Eothas offers to you, the ability to hold his attention and have his ear and wrest the Wheel out from under the gods, is much more palatable than groveling to other gods for some fleeting favor down the road.

You aren't any more a paragon of humility than he is.

You relax your stiff hold on the sliver of adra and let it roll between your hands. _Both_, you answer, the only honest response you can offer, and you make no excuses with it.

Grieving Mother listens to the thoughts that you lay bare for her. You hold nothing back -- not your honesty, not your confidence in your own experience, not the depths of the beliefs that you grudgingly share with the god who vexes you so -- and her own thoughts concede with another flash of you from her perspective, what you'd seen and felt before now coalesced into something unified. This time, it's an impression of a very disheveled and weary you who manipulates a machine far underground, who sends souls back to the bodies they belong to. _Very well_, she says. _I must ask these questions to ensure that your path is clear._

_I know,_ you say. _I want you to ask._ You don't need yes-men. You need people to reel you back in if you stray too far, while you try to bring a god to heel. Who watches the Watcher? The woman at your side who has faith in you despite her misgivings, you hope, and the man who eases his worry with your daughter's laughter. Maybe others, if you can convince them. The more, the better.

_You turn to me?_ Grieving Mother asks, not exactly surprised or demure but close enough. You see the adra plateau again, hear distant chimes on a cold wind.

_If there's anyone who understands,_ you say, _it's you._

Little changes in Grieving Mother's face as she looks out over Caed Nua, at Edér and Vela covered in grass and dirt, back to scavenging and still swarmed with animals, this time near the artificer's hall. But her mind's voice thrums with quiet emotion. _I will do as you wish,_ she says, and for a fleeting moment, you see your face superimposed over hers. _It will not be difficult. And I will watch over Vela while you are away. You need not worry about her._

Your throat tightens with the words. Between the nursemaid, the captain, and the Steward, you know that Vela will be in good hands, but it eases something in you, to know that someone nearly as powerful as you will be close. You don't like the thought of leaving Vela for any length of time, particularly not for something fraught with uncertainty, but you can't justify bringing her along when there are safer places to stay.

That is, if Eothas doesn't decide to wake the titan after all.

Your stomach lurches at the thought, your hand closing tight around the adra again, and Grieving Mother glances at you. She doesn't need to ask what's wrong, and a frown returns to her face, though it isn't as troubled as before. _I could not sense him until I felt him in your thoughts,_ she says. _I feel him now that I know what I am looking for._ She looks out at Caed Nua again, at the shadows of trees and buildings moving lazily with the afternoon sun. _I feel no threat. I believe you may rest easy for now. If something changes while you are away, I will make sure that there is no one here for him to harm._

There are no adequate words of gratitude in any tongue you know, but she feels it flowing from your mind into hers, and her thoughts tangle with yours, offering what comfort they can. You tuck the adra into the satchel and give her a nod, and then the two of you step forward to joint the hunt near the artificer's hall.

* * *

You find Edér in the chapel later. It's a simple place that doesn't see much use, though it's well-tended to by the priest, and you've had Eothasians in here before, flocking to one of the only nobles in the Dyrwood who's expressed public support and protection. Inside, there are trinkets left by staff and visitors, dedicated to various deities in corners carved out for them. You follow no god, and so the chapel has stood mainly to provide a space for others to retreat if they wish.

It's never meant anything to you, but the blazing, sun-lit starfield of Eothas is woven on a tapestry and hangs on the wall across from the entrance, and it feels entirely ironic now. Like you'd called Eothas here with it.

Edér stands before the tapestry, in front of the stand holding two dozen or so lit candles, smoking and staring in a way that lets you know that he's far away. His thoughts and emotions don't pour out of him now, but his disquiet swirls restless enough that your senses itch with it. You come up next to him and say nothing, waiting for him to speak, watching the little flames dance atop the candles.

With a tired sigh, Edér pulls the pipe out of his mouth. "You probably regret this," he says, pointing at the tapestry with the tip of the pipe.

"No," you say. "What I regret is not decking that guy." It had never been about Eothas, but about curbing anyone who had the audacity to make sneering remarks to someone you love, in _your_ home and in your presence. About being a good friend and a better leader to those who needed it. It hadn't made you especially popular in some Dyrwoodan circles, but you wouldn't take it back. Even with the god in question now lurking below and giving you a headache.

A corner of Edér's mouth twists up. "Surprised you didn't," he says. "What with your habit of picking fights and all." He shakes his head. "And you know how to pick 'em."

The flames twist and quiver hypnotically, casting shadows on the starfield that make it look alive, a pale imitation of the vision that Eothas had shown you. "I'm not asking you to fight this one with me," you say. "Not if you don't want to. Just to... tell me what you think."

Edér nods in a slow, thoughtful way. He doesn't lift his pipe again, only holds it between two fingers. "You know," he says, "fella that led us, during the war... he used to say he knew all these different ways you could kill a god, if you were so inclined. 'Course then at night he'd grind his teeth so hard it sounded like he was chewing rocks. Point is, everyone put on a brave face, made all these claims about what they'd do when they met a god in battle." His huff of laughter is quiet, reminiscent. "No sadder sight than a group of us talking big, trying to outdo each other. The prospect of meeting a god makes cowards out of most all of us, but the ones that died went brave and the ones that lived earned it."

You turn the words over in your head, seeking out the meaning between them. "You lived."

"Yeah," Edér says. "Never felt brave once, honestly. Kinda feels the same now. Edgy, sick in my gut." The pipe droops in his hands. "But... it's different this time. Might be 'cause of you." He doesn't look at you when he says it, staring ahead at the starfield again.

A warmth flickers to life in your chest. "You should have seen me when I climbed out."

"Hmm," Edér says, his eyes sweeping over you. "Don't see it now." He looks away again, and it's as if his eyes don't know where to settle next, moving between the candle flames. "You've asked me a couple times, to tell you if I think you're doing something you shouldn't. But I'm starting to think I'm not up for it, outside of reminding you to get some sleep and eat a damn meal every once in a while. Don't even know how you make the decisions you do."

"I still want to hear what you think," you say. "Even if it's just that you don't know what in the Hel I'm doing. I don't, half the time."

Edér grins. "Well, that's a comfort." He shakes his head and spins the pipe between his fingers, heedless of the ash that comes trickling out, a ghostly trail spiraling down and down and down. "Like I said, I trust you. And I owe you a lot. But I keep thinking on this, and I just don't know."

And you don't know if you can tell him anything that'll make it easier to figure out, because the lunatic nature of your plans is probably the least of his worries. That's why he's in here, staring at the starfield like it can give him answers. "... Maybe talking to Eothas will help," you venture. It had largely been an exhausting experience for you, but Edér doesn't have to talk his god out of sucking the souls out of several thousand people, so maybe he'll be able to get something out of it. Closure, at the very least. You hope so.

Something hesitant enters Edér's expression. Hesitant and yearning. You can feel it yawning within him, even when you aren't listening for it. "What's he like?"

"He's..." and you struggle to find the words, so you start with the obvious, "shiny." Edér's mouth twitches in a smile. He nods, unsurprised. "Full of himself, like all of them." You don't want to leave Edér with only that, however, and you wonder if Eothas can hear you, so you add, "But... he listened to me. Didn't get upset when I cursed him out."

Edér gives you a pointed look. "Even a larder door's not gonna help me fend off a god if you make him mad enough."

You smile, but all you say is a soft, "I don't think you'll need it." That, at least, is a certainty you can offer, even if it's only a drop in a sea of the unknown.

"That's... good," Edér says, and he looks like he's wrestling with surprise that he'd rather not be feeling. "Good to know, I mean." He tries for a smile. It doesn't quite manage to look like one. "We got one thing right, I guess. When I was a boy, he was more like a character I read about in church. Helping folks, making the world work like it should."

And you hope Eothas is listening, then. "I think," you say, your eyes flicking to the starfield lit by dancing flames, "that's what he thinks he's doing. And I'm hoping that _we_ can steer it in that direction."

You lean in on _we_, because for all that Edér wonders how you do the things you do, he's steady and constant when you need him to be, when you aren't, and you need that. You need that, because you can hear Iovara's voice again: _an ideal on its own is a grotesque and vicious thing._ Even a good one, you think. But if it isn't on its own, then maybe you can make something out of this before it becomes a mess.

But you can't do it alone. And even if Edér is just there as a voice to keep you centered, it's enough.

Edér's tosses a long sideways glance in your direction. Carefully, he extinguishes the last of the pipe's glow, then tucks it into a pouch on his belt. "See, when_ you_ say those kinds of things, I'm more inclined to believe it. Or at least to believe you believe it." He shrugs. "And I'm not inclined to argue with your big brain. Leastways not about stuff above what you pay me for."

A grin steals across your face. "I pay you? I don't recall."

Edér nods. "Gonna get me a ledger and everything, after today. I figure it's a good idea, if we keep going on these errands. Won't be getting that bountiful mayor's income anymore."

Guilt twists up tight in your stomach. There's no way you wouldn't have called him here, not when the situation involves his god and answers he's long sought, but in all of the fuss over that, you hadn't stopped to think about the possibility that he'd feel the need to drop everything to come and help you. You want him with you when you go out there, want him by your side, but you know what that's asking, and you know it might be too much. You bury your every selfish impulse and say, "You don't have to come with me, you know."

"Oh, I know," Edér says. The look he gives you is warm and reassuring, accompanied by a knowing wink, and your stomach untwists. Or rather, twists in an entirely different direction. "But I'm gonna."


	3. Chapter 3

The hatch tucked into the side of the chapel opens to a ladder, and the ladder leads down to the great right hand of the adra titan. Another platform left by adventurers past lies just beneath the ladder, and as you drop down onto it, your boots kick up dust and grime embedded into the wood, that never seems to clear out no matter how much use this passage gets. In the sunlight streaming down from the open hatch, you take a moment to light the brazier that stands atop the platform with your torch, and then Edér closes the hatch above, shutting out the sun and leaving you with only firelight and the pale green glow of the titan.

As Edér climbs down next, you stare out at the vast open palm, at its bronze markings that gleam in swirling patterns. The hand extends upwards like a plea to the heavens, its fingers breaching the surface above you, and as Edér steps down onto the platform, you imagine what kind of damage a single hand could do.

You hop down from the platform, and the sound of boots striking adra rings oddly. As you straighten, the ether resounds with sudden turbulence, and the presence permeating the Endless Paths coalesces so abruptly around you that you react on instinct. Even as Edér lands next to you, you're in front of him, extinguishing the torch with a practiced flourish and tossing it aside as your other hand extends protectively, whirling with essence. Your pendant lies above in Brighthollow with half-finished additions, but there is plenty of essence to draw from here, from the adra beneath you and from your own soul, before you quite realize what you're doing.

No vision of the stars arrives with Eothas. The cavern of the first level is empty of anything save you, Edér, and the titan's hand, and then a glowing kith-shaped form flickers into being before you. It looks as it did before, white-gold and featureless and radiant, but it's a little less dizzying when it isn't illuminating a backdrop of endless night like a small sun. It still cuts quite the figure, however, blazing in the center of a colossal hand.

Your thoughts catch up with your body, and you relax, letting your hand fall and the essence dissipate. But you don't move from where you've positioned yourself between Edér and Eothas. You turn your head slightly -- though you keep the figure in your sights, out of habit that you're not about to break -- and look to Edér.

His jaw works like he's going to be sick, and he takes half a step forward, as if he might turn around and head back the way he came with the next step. His eyes are anchored on the figure, but he nods once, small and jerky, and you step to the side just enough for him to pass. He takes another step forward, a hesitant motion ringing half-hollowly against the adra beneath, and you come up beside him, crowding close enough that he knows you're not going anywhere.

The shining figure stands placidly and silently, but the sense of Eothas's mind surges all around you once more, a vast expanse of essence both familiar and not, existing so very presently and vividly here in the physical plane. It washes up against your cipher's senses, and gladness filters in, with a drop of something like sorrow sinking through it.

He's happy to see Edér, but you don't think Edér can say the same.

Edér takes a shaky breath and goes no further across the palm. If he clenches his jaw any harder, he's liable to grind his teeth away. His apprehension cascades out of him, and between that deluge and the always bordering-on-overwhelming nature of Eothas's mind, your head feels only a breath above water.

"... You're really here," Edér says, his voice smaller than you're used to.

_I am glad to meet you, Edér Teylecg._ The voice layers over itself, emanating from the figure and radiating up from below, but not so much as to send headaches ricocheting through skulls. The figure dips its blazing head in greeting.

Edér opens his mouth, then closes it. He exhales, and he doesn't take his eyes from Eothas. The twin desires to pull away and draw closer war within him, so violently that you hear it loud and clear, and the stalemate keeps him rigid. "Spoke to you a lot, you know," he says finally, like every word takes great effort. "After the war. Always hoping to hear something." He hesitates, then folds his arms as if to hold himself steady. "Were you... were you around to hear it?"

The sea of essence churns through a pause, the drop of sorrow spreading spindly tendrils. _I heard you,_ Eothas says, and you wince, because that's the last thing that Edér is hoping to hear. _I have always heard you._

"Yeah?" Edér asks, in that ponderous way he speaks when he's upset and not quite showing it. You don't need a cipher's ear to hear that, but you feel the sudden rush of hurt, of betrayal, acrid and lancing deep through everything that makes him up. "Whole lotta good that's done me." You can see one of Edér's hands clenching and unclenching, where he thinks Eothas can't see. "Or anyone else that tried to talk to you."

_You have never needed me to find your way, Edér,_ Eothas says, and every inch of the figure shines with conviction. _Even if you felt as though you did. All I want -- and hope -- is for kith to stand on their own._

"And that's why you never answered?" Edér asks, slow like the creeping of a tide, his eyes glinting in the pale green glow of the adra, in the firelight, in the light of a god.

_You needed to experience what it was like to live without me,_ Eothas says, and the drop of sorrow becomes a river coursing through his mind. Even just brushing up against it has your throat tightening, but you extricate your own emotions from it and hold them close. You don't know if Edér sees Gaun flicker forth for a moment, hands wrapped resolute around sickle and lantern. But you do._ It will make the coming changes easier._

With a jolt, you remember what Eothas had been planning. He hadn't intended to survive his assault on the Wheel, and for all you know, he might still be planning something similar. For all you know, you might need him to give all of himself, even with whatever machine of your own you manage to build. It had slipped your mind entirely, and you hadn't mentioned it. But as angry as Edér is -- and you can feel it surging up, about to breach -- you don't think he'd take it well. Your eyes dart between the figure and Edér, and you feel Eothas's attention momentarily shift to you.

"No," Edér says coldly, and then, fuming, "no. You--" But his voice trembles and fails, and he has to start over, as the trembling spreads to the rest of him, as he unfolds his arms and clenches his fists like he's about to take a swing. "You don't get to come in and-- and kill people, and get them killed, and then decide that it's not your problem. My brother died for you!" His voice nearly reaches the level of a shout with that, echoing against the adra, but when he continues, it's softer, hoarser, and no less angry. "I wanted to die too, after all those years of not knowing a damn thing, and not getting any answers!"

He's shaking about as badly as you had been, when you'd come back to the surface that first time, and the raw force of his anger and grief washes over you in waves. You slip your hand into his, and his fingers immediately close around yours so tightly that it would be uncomfortable, if it were anyone else. He calms a little with the motion.

"That's on you," Edér says, between deep breaths. "Every life that was lost or got ruined, that's on you. I'll believe you mean well when you take some responsibility for that."

_I'm sorry,_ Eothas says, and the worst thing is that he means it. He means it, and it makes him dangerous. _The war was in many ways a mistake, one I hope to rectify._

Edér huffs miserably. "So Woden died for a mistake." He nods like that's the only thing that makes sense after all, and his hand squeezes yours reflexively, as if seeking for something. You don't enter his mind, but you lean your thoughts against his, letting some of your relative calm trickle over. Edér takes another heavy breath. "That why he switched sides? 'Cos he knew the truth?"

_He knew a part of it, yes,_ Eothas says. _My followers knew that we intended to cast light on lies that had kept kith suppressed for generations._ _I had hoped to make things clearer to them and to the Eastern Reach, by uncovering Engwithan machines and ruins long kept hidden and providing evidence, but that did not come to pass._

Edér swallows. He scuffs a foot against the adra, looking away from Eothas and down at the ground. When he looks up again, his eyes slide past the figure, drawn to the colossal fingers curling upwards some distance away, as if the light blazing in front of him is too unbearable to look at. "And I was one of the ones who got in your way."

_You did what you felt was_ _right,_ Eothas says, earnest sentiment cascading through his thoughts and glowing throughout his form, and you think that Woden fought for more than just the truth. You feel it in Edér too, as he leans forward almost imperceptibly, almost compulsively. _I cannot fault you for that._

Edér catches himself and pulls back, pressing up against you. You feel the desire to keep pulling away swell up in him, but he doesn't move. "Thought you'd say that," he mutters. His jaw works again, and he seems to gather something in himself, because he lets go of your hand and takes a resolute step forward, drawing himself up. "That's what you think too, huh? That you're making things right this time? Fixing your mistake by killing more people to feed this thing?" He waves a hand at the adra below.

_I've given the Watcher my word that I will not use this body except as a last resort,_ Eothas says.

"Yeah, but you were gonna," Edér says. "And everything they said you did, during the war..." When Eothas says nothing to dispute it, Edér shakes his head disbelievingly. "All you've done is get people killed, and then you abandoned us! What am I supposed to think? That you mean well? 'Cos it doesn't look like that, where I'm standing."

The figure blazes before you, faceless and still. You blink and blink again, afterimages of the sickle and lantern imprinting on your eyelids and vanishing, and there is more sorrow than gladness filtering through the parts of his mind that you can touch. _I would rather have you hate me than need me, Edér._

You feel the way the words strike at Edér like a blow, but he doesn't pull back. He stares unflinchingly at the light, his mouth set in an angry line. "Well," he says, his voice low, "you've done a pretty good job of getting folks to hate you. But that's the thing." His steadying breath isn't so steady. "I don't." His voice trembles with the admission. "I don't even know how to. I wish I did, believe me."

You don't think he wants that. You think he just wants to hurt Eothas even a fraction as much as Eothas has hurt him, in the only way he can.

But the full weight of that isn't easily grasped by a god, you think, even a well-meaning one like Eothas. That mortals dare and defy, pray and persist, just to see a reaction, and one on their level, not on a god's. It means more than the grandest gestures, and it's power too, in its own way, that evens the footing by a margin. You know that Edér wants to see it in Eothas, and you know that Eothas won't give it to him, that his patience and understanding is a double-edged sword. And Edér has no cipher's senses that let him feel a sliver of it anyway.

So you flood your mind up against the mind of a god, as far as you dare and then some, and you slam a lid down on your flinch, even as the burning sensation of it leaps through your thoughts and across your skin like lightning. You send a jumble of impressions his way, because you'll tolerate this asshole lurking beneath your keep, and threatening to upend it, and making you work double-time just to keep him from crushing a thousand souls beneath him in pursuit of his glorious goals, but you won't tolerate him carelessly hurting Edér again.

The figure's attention shifts to you again, sunrise breaking over the horizon and holding you in its flaring rays. The mind that surrounds you curls around your thoughts, examining what you offer, and another drop falls into the ocean. It resonates like uncertainty.

From your place standing a little behind Edér, you glare at Eothas.

The figure moves, a tremor of light that leaves the impression of a small step back, as if conceding ground. _And perhaps I am selfishly glad to hear that you don't,_ Eothas says, a softer thrum. _I wish these were better circumstances. All I am doing is for you, and it pains me that it does not appear that way to you._

It's... something, you think, and Edér's eyes widen, so it's enough. You nod as Edér swallows again, as he loses some of the rigidity keeping him stiff. He thinks long and hard, and the cavern is so silent that your breathing and your heartbeat resound in your ears like a storm front. You notice, finally, that the blazing figure makes absolutely no noise at all.

"You better be sure of what you're doing, this time," Edér says at last, his voice hard, but no longer quite so angry.

The impression of a smile radiates from the figure, and you think that even Edér can feel it. _I am,_ Eothas says, and his mellow voice hums with that blinding certainty and candor, with an echo of the Dawnstars' melodious harmonizing that comes and goes. _But I would hear your thoughts, if you wish to say something to me about it. I am well aware that you are owed._ The attention flicks back to you for another half a moment. _What would you ask of me, Edér?_

Once again, Edér appears taken aback. He spends a few more long seconds considering it, then jerks a thumb over his shoulder, at you. "You keep on listening to the Watcher," he says. "I don't know about the Wheel and all, but Kit here thinks your ideas have got some merit, and I'm more inclined to listen to her right now." He nods, more to himself than anything, as if satisfied with that. "You listen to her, let her speak for us, and then I'll believe you've got our best interests at heart."

The attention returns to you again, fleeting but felt. _I intend to,_ Eothas says. _But the Watcher needs your ear more than mine._

"She's got it," Edér says without reservation, and it draws a smile out of you, along with a thumping of your heart that you hope Eothas doesn't hear. And then the fight seems to leave Edér all at once. He shuffles back, and the desire to pull away, pull far away, wins out at last. If he were any less disciplined, you think, he might flee then and there. "Anyway," he says, still edging backwards, "that's all I wanted to say, really."

Eothas bows his head again, his light flaring infinitesimally. _I am glad to be able to speak with you, Edér,_ he says, _more than you know._

The color of Edér's face deepens. He shifts on his feet, his hands tense, as if he's become aware of them and doesn't know what to do with them. "Well," he says, "alright. Be seeing you, I guess." His voice trails up at the end, just short of a question. He stands there, tentative, before turning abruptly and climbing back up onto the platform without another word, like a man with places to be.

You hesitate before going after him, meeting the invisible gaze of the glowing figure standing in the center of the titan's palm. A great deal swirls in your thoughts, a great many things left unsaid. Eothas doesn't want to be anyone's god, you think, but for once, his evasiveness, his dancing around the point, doesn't grate on you.

It's... oddly mortal, shying away from that final line of disappointing someone for the last time.

"I'll be back soon," you say.

The figure nods, then flickers out of sight, if not out of mind.

When you're back up on the surface, Edér doesn't stop until he's in the sunlight past the shadows of the chapel. He's breathing very purposefully and carefully, his hands trembling, though he isn't quite the wreck that you'd been. He stares out at nothing, and aside from the tremors, he's still as death. Even his tumultuous emotions hold motionless like the eye of a storm, muffled to your cipher's ear.

You close the hatch and come up behind him, and your voice is quiet, like you might spook him otherwise. "Are you okay?"

Edér nods absently, and he turns to face you as if waking from a dream. "You were right," he says. "It helped. And you said it..." He smiles a weak smile that doesn't quite reach his eyes, that's genuine nonetheless. His voice becomes wondering. "We'd find some other way to know why my brother did what he did."

You rest a hand against his shoulder and squeeze, and something squeezes in your chest with it as he leans into the touch. "Told you so."

A turmoil still emanates from Edér, a thorny knot thrusting barbs outward, sharp enough that you can't help but feel them scrape against your senses. You don't know if such a thing will ever fully retreat or heal, but he'd gotten something he needed and released things otherwise festering, and that's enough for now.

You're left with an odd and grudging sort of gratitude towards the god who hides beneath your keep, and you wonder if he hears you.

* * *

Down in the Endless Paths for the third time that week, you make last-minute alterations to your new and improved pendant, and the distinct feeling of invisible eyes over your shoulder is, in a word, uncomfortable. You sit on the last step of the platform, and the titan's head radiates warmth behind you. No vision surrounds you or stands in front of you this time, but you can feel Eothas's presence blanketing the area, suffusing every inch of stone and essence. He watches you, watches what you do, and it's more than a little distracting when his mind is always a few degrees away from being a tidal wave.

But you manage to tune him out for the most part, and you make minute adjustments with pliers, not quite aware of where you are or whose presence resonates around you, until:

_May I ask you a question, Watcher?_

The pliers go still, your concentration breaking like a snapped thread, and your eyes flick up, though there's nothing to look at. "Yes?" you ask, clipped and impatient.

Curiosity flows in, buffeting your thoughts. _Why are you doing this?_

The pliers remain where they are, hovering above the pendant and its extended apparatus. "If the alignment isn't exactly right," you say, lowering the tip of the pliers to tap against the copper, "there's no telling what all of your... energy will do to my poor necklace. Or me, for that matter."

Amusement rolls through the air. _That is not what I asked._

You get the sense that some of your own words are being turned back on you. Your concentration remains elusive in the face of it, so you set the pliers down with a sigh. The adra wheel remains in your lap, heavier than before. "What do you want me to say?" you ask, looking out at the cavern and its corridors, at the stairs that lead down to the lower floor, all lit pale green and gold. "I think you're dangerous and myopic, so I am putting myself between you and every soul you don't give a shit about."

You don't know why you keep testing your luck like that. Maybe just to see if you can. Maybe _because_ you can.

_Your anger is understandable,_ Eothas says, as irritatingly patient as ever. _I am sorry if I have given you the impression that I do not care. I act for the sake of all kith souls, for the sake of their futures._

You scoop up the pliers again, pointing them at nothing in particular and punctuating your words with a shake. "Don't," you say, "start. I'm not in the mood." But you lower the pliers and think, rolling the question over in your mind. You feel a little bad about being snappish, for some godforsaken reason, and you might as well give him an answer that doesn't double as an insult. "My... past self followed you," you say, and you don't need to clarify which one. It's no doubt why you have a soft spot for Eothasians. "And I know I don't have to make amends for her. But I will."

The god of light's curiosity and lack of judgment envelop you, and in the corner of your mind's eye, you catch a flickering of distant memories that look all too familiar. _I remember her_, Eothas says, in a way that makes you think he's about to launch into some spiel.

"I don't want to know," you say at once. There's only one person from whom you want to hear about your past self, and she isn't here, but there's a god here who reminds you a little too much of her, and wouldn't she _laugh_ if you told her so. You hope the god in question can't hear anything in your head right now, either.

The mind retreats somewhat, and the memories fade out, as a tide of regret rises in their place. _Perhaps we can both make amends._

There is plenty in this life to make amends for too, that has nothing to do with a past life you had no control over, but you aren't about to get into that. All you offer is a noncommittal hum.

And you think that's the end of it, when silence once again reigns in your head, although your world has not truly been silent for a long time. But then Eothas's voice comes again, a little more insistent. Seeking for something. _You still have not answered my question_, he says. _Why is this important to you? _ The last word rings in a way that cleaves right between you and the Inquisitor. _Unless you would have me believe that your soul's past is all that has led you here._

"Really?" you ask. "That isn't enough for the god of redemption?"

_It might be,_ Eothas says, and his amusement burns warm, _if you were wholly a product of atonement. But you are not. I would know._ The mind circles yours, curious as always. _Why did you not run to my siblings as soon as you were able to?_

Even a god would not have been able to hear a conversation between ciphers. The question is natural, and you know that he's been waiting to see what you would do after you left for the surface the first time. You let a breath whistle out between your teeth. He'd let you run, too. Why? Because you'd made an impression on him? Because he'd been that confident in his plans for the statue, if you did choose to turn on him?

"Because," you say, and you sit on it for a moment, your jaw tight. "Because... this is my life's work."

You let thoughts and memories trickle out of your mind and into his, not nearly as old as the memories that had been rippling through him a moment ago. This is far from the first time you've crouched in a cavern tinkering away at rocks.

"Ciphers read housed souls, anchored to a body. To a _mind_," you say. Where the mind and the soul meet in the body -- the mantra of your childhood. "So why can we read memories even after the souls and bodies that held them are long gone, in anything we touch?"

Not even a Watcher can do that, because they aren't traces left in the ethereal planes, a Watcher's domain. The soul traces are left in the physical world where a cipher works, and a cipher works _only_ in the domain of housed souls. And that simple fact had snowballed into a tremendous question, one relentlessly pursued by your mentor... and by you.

"Whose mind are we reading when we do that?" you ask. "Why can I hear resonance around me and below me like I can hear thoughts?" You don't mean for accusation to enter your voice, but it does. "And if the planet itself is the physical manifestation of the Wheel, and the Wheel existed before Engwith, then what else has been warped and hidden from us?”

Your chest squeezes tight with the question that you won't yet ask, that you don't yet want the answer to, and waves of astonishment radiate from the mind around you. You know that whatever Eothas claims, he is in the habit of underestimating kith as only a god can. But you're having a harder time holding it against him than you might otherwise, because there's a sense of delight rising up to eclipse it. 

"Even after I left the Living Lands, I couldn't quite let it go," you say. "You think I can let _this_ go?"

You feel the way your memories are absorbed by the presence around you, the way he listens carefully. You don't say the rest aloud, but you know that he can hear it: how you want to be at the head of this because you want what he knows and then some, how you want to claw every bit of knowledge that you can out of the depths of the earth and maybe from the stars while you're at it. How you know that you are eminently capable of doing so, especially if there are no all-powerful gods in your way. You want them out of the way, and you want to be the first to dig through that wreckage. You want that, and you want to prevent as much death as you can, but you don't know which you want more.

He doesn't judge. He listens with that double-edged sword of patience and understanding that forgives all, and you think that maybe it's dangerous too. _It is because of kith like you that I do this,_ Eothas says, his resonant voice and his admiration rattling about in your head. _That I know you will turn the soil and find spring again. I would not see the wonders of this world hidden from you._

You have to piece your thoughts back together in the wake of it. "That's why I don't want to go to the others," you say. "And to be honest, I don't know if they'd be able to stop you anyway."

Certainty reverberates through the air and resounds through your mind, shining and unshakeable. _You are correct,_ Eothas says, _as usual._

It's dangerous, you remind yourself. It's dangerous to enjoy that, to start reveling in give and take with a god. But a corner of your mouth turns up anyway, and you huff.

With effort, you return your attention to the pendant in your lap. If you start asking questions now, if you voice the one all-important question that you've been chasing for years, you won't be able to stop. There will be time later, plenty of it, and you know he'll give you what you want.

It doesn't take much more fine-tuning before you decide that any more fiddling with the pendant will only drive you mad. It's as perfect as it can be, and after some cautious nudging with your senses and with a frequency counter, you get to your feet, stretching your stiff legs. You reattach the pendant to the chain, then re-clasp the chain around your neck. The wheel hangs heavier now, with a new circle of copper wiring, plating, tubing, and regulators crowning it like a corona.

"Okay," you say, looking up at the titan's head. "It's good to go. Try not to break it, please."

_I will do my best,_ Eothas says gravely.

The essence field around you stirs, quiet like a stream and then roaring like a tsunami as it's joined by something much greater, prickling over your skin and warming the air. You stiffen on instinct as the eyes of the titan glow brighter and its crown flares white-hot, as the essence of a god circles you. It's only a piece, a small portion of him, but your heart feels like it's going to thump out of your chest, and your breaths come shallow and pained. You force yourself to remain still, watching more with your other senses than with your eyes as the essence trickles into the adra at your neck.

It does so with care, and just as slowly and carefully, you lift a hand and turn the apparatus, so that the switches click into place and the regulators fire up. The last of the essence that Eothas offers to you slips in, and the pendant acts according to its new specifications: binding even such powerful energy tightly in its grasp, and masking it so that it will not be easily detected, with just enough slack to provide a link back to its greater whole. An anchored, housed soul, even if only a sliver of a larger one. It flows in a continuous loop, the energy powering the mechanism, and the mechanism cycling it through the regulation process.

You breathe out, lightheaded.

_This is well-made,_ Eothas says. His voice resonates from the pendant now, buzzing under your skull, an echo intertwining with the voice emanating from the titan. You know that he's been waiting for this too -- to see what you could create in a few short days, to see if you could put your hands and your mind where your mouth is.

"It better be," you say. The lightheaded feeling doesn't fade. The power now hanging from your neck makes your senses itch, and the pendant no longer feels heavy. When you take a few steps, your boots strike the ground like they're capable of sending shock waves through the earth, and you think you hear the adra veins far below, without even needing to listen closely or attune yourself to their resonance. "Hang on. I'm going to try something."

You turn away from the titan and the platform and the upper floor, heading down the nearest stairs to the corridor that leads to the fifth level. The corridor is a stretch of bare, hewn stone, with a little more room to maneuver, and you call violet essence to yourself -- not from your pendant like usual, but from the field all around, the one generated from the planet's core that normally provides only the barest medium to work with. It responds with vigor, essence seeping out of rock and air and the spaces in between, and you can see no limited range of your soul, no edge of your focus, not in this space, at least.

With a practiced twist of your fingers and your thoughts, you shape the essence into a wave of force, and then you hurl it forward with an overhand throw. It leaps through the field and strikes the wall across from you with a thunderous crack, shattering and splintering rock, and you flinch away on instinct.

As the dust clears, your ears ringing in the silence, you see a few pieces of jagged rock hovering in front of you, ones that would have otherwise delivered some nasty cuts, caught not by your hands or your mind but by the thing in your pendant burning hot. Beyond it, a massive dent in the wall spiderwebs into serrated cracks, the display larger than a contingent of aumaua standing side-by-side. You don't feel even a little winded or drained. In fact, your whole body buzzes with energy, with vitality, down to your very soul.

"Shit," you breathe.

_Indeed,_ the voice in your head says. The hovering splinters of rock clatter to the ground.

You stare down at your hands, listening to the hum of the field around you, louder than you've ever heard it before, your range wider and farther than it's ever been. You know that if you tried to peer into the ether right now, you could look long and deep. Maybe all the way down to the so-called Beyond. "Oh, this could definitely go to my head."

_We will have to ensure that it goes to neither of ours,_ Eothas says, and a familiar ripple stirs in your thoughts and his now blurring closer together. A name that isn't spoken, that doesn't quite surface. You lower your hands, unease prickling up your spine, and your question held close and secretive doesn't surface either. Is that what happened to Waidwen? To whatever he and Eothas became?

At least your head isn't glowing, as far as you can tell.

You return to the upper floor to retrieve your tools and your torch, and then you make your way to the third level and the entrance to the master staircase there. The sense of Eothas doesn't diminish, even when you put distance between yourself and the titan. His mind is just as present, and though it feels less like an ocean that you could drown in, the edges and borders between that presence and your own mind feel murkier, harder to delineate, like an artist's sharp lines bleeding rivulets of ink.

You think on that as you climb, as you pass braziers you'd lit on the way down, the only light in pitch darkness. The essence remains contained in the pendant, but it's an object that you are naturally attuned to, that you'll have to continuously attune to in order to maintain contact with the entity below your keep. You might start keeping a personal journal again, alongside your notes. It's a good way to track changes.

But that's yet another problem for later, and as the master staircase spirals ever higher around the Endless Paths, your thoughts begin chasing each other in dizzying circles, as they usually do when you have nothing to occupy your hands. They're a little harder to rein in than usual, but they keep circling back to one thing.

"Hey, Sunshine," you say, and the presence in your pendant reacts slowly, as if in bemusement. Another smirk tugs at your face despite your best efforts, though it fades fast. "What did you mean, when you said you wanted to abdicate?"

You can feel the essence turning about in the pendant, alongside the thoughts of a god, and you resist the urge to listen closely. You could delve deeper now without being seared by titanic depths, but you don't need the lines bleeding away any more than they already are. _I cannot in good conscience remain as I_ _am,_ Eothas says._ And all that I am is better bestowed elsewhere._

He's certainly bad at getting to the point, but the edges of your mind and his overlap now, no matter how much you refrain from listening. You hear what he means, loud and clear. "You know," you say, "if this works, your friends are going to have it out for me."

The presence shifts, as if coiling in a wider circle, not just through the pendant but around you. _Their power will be greatly diminished,_ Eothas says. _Their power to act in this world even more so._

"Still." You nudge at the pendant with a finger, letting the sense of its inhabitant and its internal workings travel up to your mind. It feels good. Functional. You'll need to measure it in the mundane way soon, mindful of the need for multiple sources of data, but your mind latches on to every minute fluctuation in an unusually effortless way, that leaves no room for error of judgment. "So will yours, then, right?" You pass the next brazier and gaze up at the stairway that disappears into gloom, a darkness always just out of reach. The shadows seem deeper, the light brighter than you remember from the trip down. "I know you want Edér to let go of you, but I don't think you get how hard that is."

You don't think you can really get it either. Your mentor had been an adherent of Galawain, but that devotion had been comprised of oddly competitive and almost jealous dimensions, and she hadn't been the type to raise a child with any concern for piety. You hadn't grown up with any god looming over you. No nation, no god, no doctrine had ever been able to hold sway in a place like the Living Lands. The gods had only ever been distant figures and occasional objects of curiosity, and it makes it easy for you to see them as they are. It's not so easy, you think, if they're all a person has ever known.

Your boot hits a stray bit of stone, and it bounces off the wall, then clatters down the stairs behind you. The echoes seem louder than usual, cutting deeper and sharper. You've always been able to hear more than most, but this is different. Heightened. When Eothas speaks, you hear it in the unrest of his thoughts, that he already knows the answer to his question, that it troubles him. _What are you saying, Watcher?_

"I'm saying," you continue, "that the only one at fault for people believing in you is _you_. You helped to make this mess in the first place. You said it yourself, you've waited a long time to act. And I know you're trying to fix it. I appreciate that. I want to help you. But you can't fix things by breaking them and being done with it." You shake your head. "One good thing doesn't mean you're not responsible for the mess you made."

Something stirs in his mind, and you interject before it can surface.

"I'm not talking about what kith are capable of doing without gods in the way," you say. "That's not the point. The point..." You try to arrange your thoughts into a coherent thesis. "The point is not to get in the way of kith or-- or lord over them, it's to take responsibility for the shitstorm afterwards, and not just for seeing it done. You make a mess, you clean it up."

Images and impressions flicker through your mind's eye: ancient architecture that looks familiar to your old soul, and pinpricks of stars, and burning, concentrated essence that defies all shape in its natural state, and pulsing veins of living stone, and a spinning, droning armillary sphere. You can't quite piece them together enough to know what Eothas is thinking. _If your machine requires a significant amount of starting input..._

"... then you give me everything you've got," you say. "But if it doesn't..." You take a deep breath, an anticipatory nervousness planting roots deep in your stomach. Things will get worse before they get better, and diminished or not, the gods have legions of followers on every continent. "I want you to watch my back after I do your dirty work, and I want you to do right by Edér and all your followers." If Eothas's actions rebounded on them once, the same could very well happen again, and not just confined to the borders of one country this time. You let your worries trickle over into his mind. "I want you to help me manage the fallout."

Thoughts buzz and rake against yours, knife-sharp and white-hot. It's agitation, plain and simple, and you wonder if he knows what it means to you, that it's raw and real, and that you'd been able to draw it out of him. _You are asking me to remain a god._

You think that maybe it's the only way he knows how to abdicate. You think that maybe none of the gods -- manifestations of singular intent and concentrated ideas, and violently contorted around their fulfillment -- know how to think smaller in a way that matters. But you hope that they can learn. They have to learn. "No," you say softly. "I'm asking you to use whatever power you've got left at the end of this to work with us, not above us. And if you can figure out how to do that, then maybe your kin can too."

Some of them, you think grudgingly, will perhaps be able to handle it well. But the rest...

The presence in your pendant is silent. Its thoughts are now muted, indistinct, as if Eothas has pulled back. You don't chase after him. You don't try to dig around in the sliver of the mind that you now carry with you. You're not about to start crossing boundaries better left uncrossed, not when they're already too blurred for comfort.

"Just... think on it," you say. "We've got time."

The stairs continue to wind up and up and up, and your legs start aching in earnest, after all that time curled over your pendant. You climb and climb until you reach the first level, where the ground thankfully levels out. It's a short walk from there to the titan's hand, to the surface, and you're nearly at the base of the hand when Eothas speaks, so suddenly that you jump. You're going to have to get used to that, if you don't want odd looks to start scrutinizing you too closely.

_We gods are not immune to base impulses,_ Eothas says pensively, and you don't tell him that you couldn't have possibly guessed that, thanks. _When you accused me of being a hypocrite, I... desired to prove you wrong._

You nearly miss the first wooden step and stumble onto the platform that leads up to the titan's hand. But he's completely serious, you think, nudging at the thoughts swirling against yours and finding them earnest, and your laugh is quiet. "You know," you say, "I like you a lot more, all of a sudden."

_I thought you might appreciate the truth,_ Eothas says, and the pendant pulses with a warm sense of regard, which shivers down your spine. _You have... reminded me that faith requires uncertainty. If I cannot put my faith in kith now, then my faith in the future means very little. You have given me a great deal to think about. _The regard swells, breaking gently against the shores of your mind and yet intense enough that you pause in the center of the titan's hand, as if rooted there. _So I wish to thank you, Watcher,_ Eothas says, _for challenging me._

You have to clear your throat to answer. It's a needlessly roundabout way of saying that he'll think on it like you asked, but you'll take it. "Get used to that too," you say, "because I don't let up."

_I expect nothing less,_ Eothas says, and you uproot yourself from the adra and head for the ladder.

You have a feeling that you're going to be doing a lot of challenging in the coming days. You know enough about Eothasian doctrine to know that Eothas likes to do things loud and bright, needs to light up the night and burn away shadows, and you need to do anything but -- at least until you start the final countdown. An ideal on its own is a grotesque and vicious thing, you think. But maybe you can temper that ideal enough that the two of you can do some productive damage.

Or maybe, says the quiet thought skulking at the back of your mind, the opposite process will exacerbate something in you.

When you emerge into the shadow of the chapel, the morning sun blazes above, and the grass beneath your feet quivers with its own tiny threads of essence. You feel it in the leaves on the trees, in the wind against your face, in the lines between Caed Nua's new and old stones. You feel it far below, in the rushing rivers of adra and in the burning core, and you feel it high above, in the fields that extend past the borders of the planet. You feel it in the turning of Eora, in the ancient gyration existing before and after any gods, in the spin that drives all parts of the universe.

You feel it in all things, and you smile, hungry and radiant. "Well," you say, "let's get to work," and the god within your pendant and beneath you turns his mind in the same direction as yours -- towards the future.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _ [Gotta find me a future, move out of my way~](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-_i2wpNMl4) _
> 
> I'm gonna call this the "Hound of Eothas but it's just the Watcher nagging him about not being a dickhead" AU. (Jk, I like Hand of Eothas, myself.)
> 
> Also, not to be ominous, and Kit's got a hard-won moral compass that she won't let go of easily, plus the sense to surround herself with external checks, but she's also got a bit of a god complex, and I've been pondering that line in The Bridge Ablaze about Eothas and Waidwen being a monster together. Positive feedback loop indeed. Much to think about.
> 
> "You are a capricious creature, like Eothas." Ondra said it, not me!


End file.
